It's been a while, hasn't it?

So, despite what my update schedule may imply, I'm still here, meandering angrily through life.

I can't even remember what my last blog was about, before the Arthur C. Clarke one. Huh. A completely random post in early March about my Computing project. Well, I've finished that, after some more difficulty. And my Physics project. And my exams. And my whole school career, in fact.

As of early June, I've been done with Sixth Year and done with my secondary education. Next up, tertiary, but I'll get to that a little later. I spent the time after that mostly hanging around at home, occasionally going in for the odd event. Went in to help with the odd event as well as play Laserquest and some practice for my last ever house marching. Didn't go the prom, again. Still can't see the point.

I wrote a decent Sixth Year Show, something I've been looking forward to since Primary 7, when I first saw the fun the S6s had making fun of the teachers on-stage. I had some good jokes and everyone I showed it to seemed to like it. They did karaoke instead, since apparently a few of the precious shows have offended teachers.

It was, quite frankly, one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. It wasn't just the fact that it was karaoke, which is gut-wrenchingly horrible at the best of times. There was the feeling that I could have done so much better, if I'd been given the opportunity. There was the knowledge that the experience and the feelings would be some of my last memories of Wellington School, a place I've known for over a decade.

I did what any sane man would have done in the situation - I listened to my iPod. A couple of people noticed but nobody whose opinion I actually cared about thought it was anything other than funny. I don't know if any teachers noticed but none of them called me on it if they did. Unfortunately, I still had to traipse up to the front of the hall with everyone else and sing, or at least pretend to from behind everyone else. I have a funny feeling that I will never again be able to enjoy "Bohemian Rhapsody".

But then it was over and it was time to go home. The next day was Speech Day, where I got to sit and listen to the usual droning on from the school governors about fiscal years and fee increases, the usual preaching from the headmaster about commitment, teamwork and how it all came together to make Wellington fantastic at playing rugby and the usual overly-long prayer, thanking God for every little thing that had happened during the year. The guest speaker wasn't too bad this year, compared to some.

I think it's now one of my goals in life - to get good enough at whatever I do (writing, video game design, comedy, whatever I wander into) to be invited back to speak at one of those things.

Anyway, before the main thing (and for a few days previously, in fact), all the leaver's books had been getting passed around. I'm always useless with things like that - it's hard enough for me just trying to conjure up something emotional or deep, let alone doing so under pressure and on paper. So in the first one I was handed, I wrote:

"Bye.
- Alasdair"

This apparently wasn't good enough for the girl who'd asked me so I thought about it some more and wound up writing a couple of paragraphs. I wrote some more generic stuff in some other people's books - mostly just people who were doing the rounds and getting everybody, I think, along with some more joking entries for people I'm confident I'll see again.

I even got one myself. Well, kind of. I happened to have a notepad with me which I took out of my bag, scribbled "Alasdair's Impromptu Leaver's Book (and waste of a perfectly good notebook)" on the front of and got a few people to scrawl in.

But back to my main point - my last day. I grabbed some photos of the common room and savoured the smell one last time before I left. Maybe I'll share the photos at some point. Then it was down to the town hall, some last minute writing and chatting in the chairs on the stage (I'd managed to grab a seat relatively hidden from view, allowing me to play around on my iPhone or read Private Eye if I got too bored) and the speeches I mentioned, then I walked up to get my books (Dune and The Time Machine for the Advanced Higher Maths and Advanced Higher Computing prizes respectively... I'm starting to get an inkling about why people call me a geek).

Back to my seat to sit some more while more people received more prizes (as I did more wondering just how many awards for sporting achievement one school needs). There were some tears and lots of hugging once it was all over. Just to be clear, I was only involved in the hugging, and somewhat reluctantly so at that.

And then I went home. To play Smash Bros Brawl, which had just come out.

I think I'm going to leave the narrative here for now. I may follow up with more tomorrow... or, more accurately, later today. Ah, the joy of not having to do all my posting before midnight. Anyway, there'll be more at some point, if I can be bothered.

RIP Arthur C Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke, one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries, has died in hospital at the age of 90.

I have only read a few of his books (I read, and greatly enjoyed, 2001: A Space Odyssey and then something distracted me before I finished 2010: Odyssey Two) but he has had a huge influence on my life, if only as a byproduct of the influence he has had on the world as a whole.

He was among the first to think about and formally propose the concept of a geostationary satellite, a technology that is the basis of almost all global telecommunication systems, and he was always at the forefront of scientific knowledge. He also brought the concept of space elevators to his audience, an act he believed would leave a far greater legacy than even the satellites.

Really, there's nothing more I can say. He was a great man. Read all the tributes and, more importantly, read his books and you will undoubtedly see why I and so many others think so.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a bookmarked copy of 2010 lying around here somewhere that needs read...

Completely Random Post

I know, I know, I've not done anything for a week. I've been taking it easy and mostly enjoying it.

This likely means nothing but it seems like something I ought to write down so that I can remember it and laugh. Who knows, it may even amuse you. Whoever you are.

You know the Computing project I've been stuck on for weeks, possibly even months, now?

Well, I just solved the last bug that was stopping it from working properly (it's still a little dodgy but I can get on with the basic testing and so on) and iTunes, working it's way through the playlist marked "Other", switches from Still Alive to What a Wonderful World.

Seemed strangely appropriate.

Not Done Yet

I really should have spent more time today trying to write this thing. One year ago today, I wrote this. Now here I am, one year later, challenge more or less fulfilled, and I can't think of anything to write.

Would it be suitably ironic if I just called this a crappy post and left it at that? I don't think I have it in me tonight to write much more. I'll at least try to do a woodle for tomorrow.

Something's happened now that hasn't happened in a while – I have too many ideas. There are a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head, some related to my experience with TWToday, some related to my various fiction projects, even a couple of solutions to my Computing project code problem (which I really need to work on tomorrow).

The problem is that I don't feel like I can do any of them justice in the time I've given myself, especially given that I'm now very tired and can barely type a sentence without at least three spelling errors cropping up.

I think that's the problem with this one post a day strategy. I'm naturally lazy and keep leaving things too late and even if I didn't, I don't think I'd have enough free time in one day to write some of this stuff down the way I really want it done. That ridiculous sentence is probably the best example of what happens when I get rushed.

Or is it ridiculous? It seemed that way at the time, a mere moment ago, but surely with a bit of proof-reading and editing, I'd be happy with it. Maybe I'd be happy with it now if I simply read it over again. Maybe I could have been happy with it before had my poor typing and tiredness not been putting me in a bad mood already.

Was that the right tense?

I don't care. I can't be bothered going back to fix it.

Okay, I've made a decision. Tomorrow, I'll spend some time collecting my thoughts and writing them down. If I don't have them in a form I like by the end of the day then I'll simply save it, go to bed and work on it some more the day after. I'll also try to find some time to make a woodle and start writing The Grey Line again*. And I have to get something done on that Computing project I keep mentioning.


Crap. I went away for a minute and completely lost my momentum. Anyway, that's the plan for now. Hopefully, it heralds some better quality updates around here as well as the completion (or, more accurately, start of) several other plans and projects of mine.

And with that, I bid you goodnight.

Because I was really starting to get sick of that other catchphrase.







*Those paying attention (which at this point is probably just me and even then only for about half the time) will have noticed that I deleted the all the posts at Corbett's Fiction. I wasn't happy with them and I've decided to go for a whole new method, just as soon as I find the time.

On prelim results and some other stuff too

Despite all my worrying and total lack of proper revision, I seem to have done okay in all my prelims. Enough to secure three A's, anyway. I got 70% in Computing, which doesn't sound too great until you consider that everyone else was getting 50-60%. Fortunately for us all, our teacher knew that the paper wasn't great quality and he even said he'd been fairly harsh on the marking, so that seemed to be okay.

Maths was a pleasant surprise – 84%, a mark which meant I was tied with two other people for top marks in the class. I really didn't see that one coming, I figured I'd screwed up a lot more than I actually had. Ditto for Physics where I managed to get 79% somehow.

So that's that over and done with and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. Now I can move on to dealing with the myriad of other problems, crises and decisions that are fast approaching.

One of those will undoubtedly be what to do about my update schedule for TWToday. Though I think I've done my full 365 posts by now, this being the 366th, the anniversary of my challenge is actually tomorrow due to the leap year.

As we've once again had to postpone the Key to Time marathon (reminding me once again just how bloody inconvenient these constant hospital appointments are), I should have some time tomorrow to flick through the blog archives and ponder what's happened over the last year. Then on Sunday... I don't know. Maybe I'll update, maybe I won't.

I've been getting sort of lax with the daily schedule lately. I know I manage to get a post done each day but I keep leaving it far too late and they have a tendency to come out like rushed diary entries. My current thinking is that I'll keep blogging but I'll take my time with each post and try to have something interesting to say in all of them.

Hopefully, I'll also be able to devote some time to my other projects on a regular basis. After all, the entire point of this little exercise was to prove to myself that I can stick to a schedule if I want. I suppose the next logical step would be to stick to a schedule and produce something of consistent quality.


Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. You know, I reckon that if I stick to this idea of only posting when I have something interesting to say, meaning that there's no pressure to post late at night, this may well be the last time I round off a post with the fact that I'm going to bed.

Anyway, I'm going to bed. Have a nice day.

End of the Prelims

Physics... went reasonably well, I guess. It's kind of hard to gauge, looking back on it. I managed to get through most of the mechanics section without too much difficulty, then I started to struggle a bit with the electricity and magnetic fields and was more or less completely stumped by the final waves section.

That was just on the first pass through, though. I think I managed to fill in a few blanks as I went back over it. In the end, I was just flicking between the pages, looking for conspicuous gaps in my answer sheet, so it's a bit hard to remember what exactly I got right or wrong. I wouldn't have minded a few more minutes to do some extra checking but any more than that would probably have driven me nuts as I sat there, racking my brains for facts I didn't know.


Anyway, for the first time in weeks, I feel like I've got no pressure on me. Other than my Computing project... and my Physics project... and the need to learn to drive and to choose a university... Bah. It's a lot less pressure anyway, so it's still a good feeling.


I decided to take my free time today and spend it playing one of those games I got last week. I decided to go with Eternal Sonata over Final Fantasy XII, for no particular reason other than the fact that it was already on my desk.

From what I've played so far, it seems pretty good. The battle system is interesting and the plot seems to be fairly deep. Developer tri-Crescendo still seems to be having some trouble with localising their voice acting, as they did on Baiten Kaitos. It's not all bad and I think I will leave it on sometimes, since the cinematics are now fully animated, meaning that if it wasn't on I'd just see the characters mouths moving to the subtitles.

I'll hopefully get some more of it done tomorrow.


Nothing much else to say tonight. I should be able to think about my prelim results tomorrow and I'll hopefully be able to spare some time to consider the end of my little one post a day challenge.

Or maybe not. Who knows?

Have a nice day.

Almost There...

I think I've reached the acceptance stage now. The point where I'll be willing to flick through my notes a few more times, and I certainly will do when I'm waiting in school before the prelim tomorrow, but I know that it's not going to make a huge difference and I just want it over and done with.

More colloquially, the acceptance stage is also known as the “fuck it” stage.

Seriously though, I'm not quite sure what to do now. I know that there's stuff I don't know, stuff I almost certainly ought to know, but I just can't be bothered looking it up and trying to memorise it at this point. I'm not sure it would even help if I did.

It's just coming up to ten past eleven as I write this, so if I finish this off now, I can go to bed early. Well, early for me anyway.

To round things off, here are a few links.

Seems an executive at Sony doesn't like the Eee PC very much. While I can sort of see his logic, it doesn't really make much sense to me. I might talk about this some more when I have more time and I've done more with Eridani. For now, draw your own conclusions.

Just because I happened to come across it today, here's a clip from the movie of the old Batman series with Adam West. I actually had this film as a kid. I'd say it made more sense when I was that age but it really didn't.

Finally, I shall maintain until the day I die that this is one of the funniest scenes in television history. It builds up slowly but watch it through to the end or you'll be robbing yourself of a classic piece of British sitcom humour.

And that's it. I'm off to bed.

Wish me luck.

Nothing At All

It's six o'clock on Tuesday and I believe I've finally entered panic mode for Thursday's Physics prelim. I've given up on doing my Computing project since I reckon I can get away with it and I need to give priority to my Physics. I could have easily done both if I stopped being so lazy but, hey, I could also have done both if I had a team of Visual Basic coding monkey physicists. One's about as likely to occur as the other so there's no sense speculating.


It's later now, almost half past ten. I didn't get much further with my studying, just a couple more questions on a past paper. Seems that panic mode was, unfortunately for me I suspect, a false alarm. I'll probably do more revision tomorrow. Probably.

I think I've reached the stage now when I just want these prelims out of the way. I still want to do well and I know I'll be kicking myself later if I do badly because I didn't revise but all I'm really after now is less pressure and return to normality. Same goes for my constant hospital appointments, though I won't go into that right now.


I've really done absolutely nothing today. I've just been flitting between being bored out of my skull and checking my usual roster of websites. I've been trying to avoid starting any new games or DVD sets since I know it'll just distract me but I can't be bothered doing any work either so I just sit around being bored and miserable.

Which really isn't a great state of mind to write in or, for that matter, about.


I think I'll just call it a night.


Actually, one thing first. It's just occurred to me that I'm days away from meeting my original challenge of one post a day for a year. That's... kind of scary, actually. Well, with any luck, I should be able to find some time and energy from somewhere to mark the occasion properly. The exact date falls on Saturday, I think, so I might not get much done then. I'll probably be too busy recovering from my prelims and watching Doctor Who. Maybe Sunday. If I don't spend the whole day doing my Computing project...

I'll get round to it eventually.


Okay, now I'm actually stopping.

A fairly small post in which nothing remarkable is said

I managed to make some progress today. Nothing much but it's a start. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about my Computing project – looks like I'll be working on it over the weekend at the very least. Well, on Sunday. Saturday is still Key to Time marathon day.

I figure I'll go into panic revision mode sometime tomorrow. The one semi-advantage to these constant hospital trips is that I have to get up early in the morning, which seems to help me get work done. Sort of.


Anyway, nothing much else happening today.

Like, nothing. At all.

Seriously, I've nothing to say.

My mind's just completely blank. I think the effects of going to bed at two in the morning and getting up at seven have finally caught up with me.

I think I'll call this a mini-post. That means that I need a few things to link too...

This old comic from the 80s, starring none other than Chuck Norris, is absolutely hilarious. I really have a hard time believing that anyone ever took this seriously or even thought that it would be a good idea. I suppose there must have been at least a few people for it to get published but still...

And... uhh... hold on, I'll find something... okay, no I won't.

I'm going to bed.

Have a nice day.

A day of little things

I finally completed Mass Effect. That's kind of like doing something productive... right?


Well, it's the end of the day now and I've not really done much else. Woke up too late, I think. That always upsets my routine.

Come to think of it, my routine largely consists of doing nothing so it doesn't really upset it so much as it encourages me to follow it through rather than doing any work.

My hastily revised plan is now to work on my Computing project tomorrow as well as look over my Physics notes and identify any problem areas. With any luck, I should be able to get the coding done by Tuesday and, no matter what happens, Wednesday is constant Physics. If I still can't get it finished, I can always stall on Friday (we'll probably spend the lesson going over the prelim anyway) and have a go at it after the Key to Time marathon on the weekend.

I'll muddle through somehow. Just let me enjoy my ever-so-brief respite.


A couple of other interesting things happened today.

Some friends of mine randomly appeared on a certain very popular website that I won't link to because it's really not a very pleasant website most of the time. It seems it was a photo taken from someone's Bebo page though no one's quite sure how it ended up where it did. It could have just been a coincidence or it could have been a joke by someone who hasn't owned up yet.

Either way, it was extremely funny for reasons I won't go into.


I don't know if I've said this before, but the wireless network in our house tends to suck. It's like the walls are made of lead sometimes. We figured we'd solved the problem a while back by setting up Home Plug stuff so that I could wire my room and then adding range extenders so everyone else's computers would work.

It's a setup that's worked fairly well up until now, when one of the range extenders died last week. We had someone come out and look at it and he thought it might have got knocked or dropped. It didn't really matter since it was under warranty anyway and it was just a matter of sending it off to Netgear and waiting for a replacement. In the meantime, we moved the second range extender to where the first had been, since it was that one that gave my brother's room and the kitchen wireless access.

Then the second one died. It stopped working yesterday, apparently due to the same fault as the first. We know that this one wasn't knocked or anything so our best guess is that it has something to do with the power supply, which we left in place when the first one died and used when we put the second one it its place.

Since my brother doesn't like being left without internet, this necessitated a trip to PC World to find a Home Plug adaptor for his room that he could use as a stop-gap measure. We eventually picked one up, after having a little difficulty finding them and then more difficulty finding just a single one rather than a more expensive pair. Hopefully, once the extenders get fixed, he'll stop needing it and I can steal it off him to use with Linus and my Beaten Up Old Laptop^TM, neither of which are near enough to my current adaptor to connect easily.

While we were there, I took a chance to poke around the monitors as I still need to pick one up for Linus and the PC I'm planning to build. There were a few good deals, especially the ex-display ones that were going cheap, but I figured I ought to see if I could get anything better online first. I'll probably get round to that later in the week.


It's getting close to my arbitrary midnight deadline now so I'll call it quits for tonight. With any luck, I'll have got something useful done by this time tomorrow.

Day Off

Another lazy Saturday almost over and done with. Not very productive but I'd already decided that I'd be taking it as a day off so that's not a problem.

Finally got round to going into Ayr this morning and trading in some old games that I never play. Some of them were pretty worthless but a couple of Wii and 360 games were worth enough that I ended up with £60 of store credit. This was, of course, promptly spent on Eternal Sonata and Final Fantasy XII, along with a plush Sonic doll.

I had heard of Eternal Sonata and dimly remembered good reviews of it so, since it was on special offer and I tend to like RPGs, I figured it might be a good deal. I originally bought my second-hand PS2 purely to try out some of the vast RPG library, something which I've singularly failed to do, so a new Final Fantasy game going cheap seemed like a good idea. I don't really have a reason for getting the Sonic plushy.

So I guess I can add two more massive RPGs to my ever-expanding list of games I need to complete. Maybe once I get my prelims, projects and hospital visits out of the way, I can go on a total gaming binge for a week, see how much I can do.

Well, even if I don't (and, knowing me, I probably won't), I can at least try to get a bit more done once everything serious is out of the way. I'm also way behind on my plans for a few other things, like VersusCOM and The Grey Line.

Anyway, no point dwelling on that now. This is my day off.

Which means that tomorrow is my first day back on again. I'm hoping to have a shot at tackling my Computing project so that I can get it out of the way and focus on Physics revision for the rest of the week.


It's just occurred to me that I've once again forgotten all about the woodle for this week. Never mind, I'll definitely have one ready for next time. It's relatively simple and my “artist” should find it fairly easy to draw, which means he'll probably do it. If he remembers.


I think that's about it really. Nothing too deep or interesting but there rarely ever is.

Oh, actually, there is one last thing. I bought a copy of Hey You, Pikachu! off eBay earlier. It's an interesting little game that the Wikipedia article can explain in more detail than I can be bothered to do. Unfortunately, it only ever came out in the US and Japan so it's an NTSC version and I don't have an NTSC N64 or a convertor, so until I get one of those, all I've got is a £17, voice-recognising paperweight.


And that's really it for today. I'll be back tomorrow, I guess.

Two Down, One to Go

Computing actually went quite well. I showed up about forty minutes before the exam to find that the other three guys in my class had been there for a while. Two had been in all day. Judging from the amusing panic that ensued before we left for the exam room, they'd spent that time doing anything but revision.

I'd spent the morning trying to decide what to revise. I glanced over my notes but they're all either in a huge PDF or in single paragraph, Flash diagram-laden web pages that I really couldn't be bothered looking over. In the end, I skimmed through some of the presentations I'd made for class, which basically just summarised the notes and added some amusing pictures.

I didn't get to finish looking over them at home so I took them in on my USB key and Sam and I spent a while alternating between chatting, panicking and glancing at them on Deimos and Eridani*. We were mostly chatting and panicking about how screwed we all were if certain topics came up (mostly algorithms of any kind).

Once it began though, I (and presumably the others as well) were able to relax a little. There were a few annoyingly vague or badly worded questions but it never really got much harder than the tests we do each week in class. Of course, there was still the usual assortment of errors we've come to expect from these commercial prelim papers (missing question numbers, schedules showing projects ending before they begin, etc.) plus the usual annoying pop culture references (an example database full of Harry Potter characters).

Timing wise, it was a mercifully short (though constant writing made it seem a lot longer) one and a quarter hours. I was never really rushed but I finished pretty close to the deadline. I wouldn't have minded a couple more minutes to check over everything but it's better than sitting around for twenty minutes going insane over unknown answers.

Like in my Maths prelim.


Still, as the title says, that's two down with one left to go. I figure I'll take tomorrow off before starting on Physics some time on Sunday. Between now and Friday, I also have to find the time and energy to scrape together a solution to that problem with my Computing project that's been bugging me for weeks now.

I've a couple of ideas and it'll hopefully be pretty straightforward once I remind myself of how everything works. As for the Physics revision, I've got a pretty good idea of what I need to look up and practice. Once I skim through everything, that mental list will probably double in size but meh. Better than being unprepared.


That's all for tonight. I'll try to get a woodle up tomorrow, unless I get distracted by another five hour session of Mass Effect. Which I probably will.






*Our respective Eee PCs, in case you haven't been paying attention.

Maths Make Brain Hurt

Maths could have gone worse, I suppose. There were a few things that I just completely blanked on and a few others that I got by trial and error but, overall, I think I did okay. A solid B at worst.

Still, no matter how well it may or may not have gone, three hours of Maths has left me kind of drained. I've spent most of the afternoon and evening just lazing around, browsing websites, playing Mass Effect and catching up on some TV shows*.

I know that I probably should have done some Computing revision but I just can't for some reason. Let's called it tiredness and stress combined with natural laziness and arrogance and leave it at that.


Bleh. I'm trying to come up with some kind of interesting point to make about my prelims and what it was like sitting them and so on but I think it'll have to wait until I'm less braindead.

I've also been meaning to go through all the news that's been coming out of the Game Developer's Conference over the past few days. Just check out all the coverage at Joystiq.


You know, I don't want to call this a mini post but I do want to go to bed now and I can't be bothered adding much more...

How about some links? That always helps justify stuff... somehow.

Anyway, this has basically sealed it – I am buying Rock Band.

And... uhhh... there must be something else I can link to... I haven't mentioned the Doom comic yet, have I? Well, here's the Doom comic. Don't ask why, don't ask what. Simply read it and either laugh or go insane.


That'll do for now.







*I've started using the BBC's iPlayer service. Our Sky+ is still on the blink, usually to the point of being incomprehensible, so it's the best way to catch up on show's I missed. Used it for Ashes to Ashes and Torchwood, mostly.

Mostly Nonsense

Well, I shaved off my proto-beard.

...

Now my chin is cold.


Anyway, it's getting late in the morning and I haven't done much in the way of revision yet so I'll go do a prelim now. I may end up doing one of those “blogging throughout the day” posts that I haven't done in a while. I'll probably try to post it early as well, so I can get as much sleep as possible. I get the distinct impression that I'm going to need it.

Oh, and since it's almost 11:30, Sam should be in the last couple of minutes before his English prelim ends. I'll have to ask him how that went later.


Huh. Judging from the fact that it's now half ten and dark outside, it seems that plan didn't really work out so well.

I'll have to finish this off pretty quick now. I'm actually seriously completely determined to get to bed before midnight tonight.

But first, I have to do some more Maths revision. I've been meaning to look over complex numbers (an accurate title if ever there was one) for the past week and I've no idea why I left it until now but I did.

I really have no idea where I'm going with this. I'm fairly sure my brain's been fried by Maths and stress. This time tomorrow, it'll have been fried by Maths, Computing and stress. I'll hopefully have recovered by Saturday, at which point the cycle can begin anew with my Computing project, Physics and stress.

I reckon that from here on in, I have two options: become accustomed to my situation and approach it calmly and logically or go slowly insane. I have yet to determine which will help more.


Okay. That's it. I'm going to bed. I know this post has been kind of rambling and incoherent but that's really just a reflection of the mood I'm in and there's no sense in trying to change it.

Actually, first, I need to pack my bag and make sure I've got everything ready for tomorrow. And I might glance over that stuff on complex numbers.

Crap. Well, whatever. I'm ending this post so that I can get on with that other stuff and then go to bed.

I really think I'm addicted to Mass Effect now

So it's a little after three o'clock now and something just occurred to me. My Maths prelim is the day after tomorrow.

I'm going to go do a practice paper. That way, I won't be lying next time someone asks me if I've done any work.


Well, that was frightening.


Anyway, I'll finish that paper off tomorrow, then do some last minute panic revision on the stuff I think I need to know... I'm getting the distinct impression that this isn't going to go at all well for me. Sometimes I think I have a handle on it and then the question just throws up some obscure little rule I'm meant to have learned in S3 and everything goes nuts from there on in

I'm still hoping that Computing won't be too bad. I've almost forgotten about Physics for the time being. Ditto for my Computing project.

Nothing much I can do about all that now, I suppose. The plan for tomorrow remains Maths, Maths and more Maths. I've managed to clear enough desk space in the study that I can work in there, where it's normally pretty quiet. Only other person who goes in there regularly is Erin to do her homework for a while each night. But that's just for a short time and if I'm still studying at that point, or worse yet, if I haven't started, then I'm probably completely screwed anyway.


You know, I only have a couple more weeks until I reach the one year mark with TWToday.

Lately, I've become a little despondent over it. Partly I feel the quality is sliding due to my own laziness and partly I think I've just not been up to it lately. Over the last few months, I've been putting up with this stupid pilonidal sinus, or rather, I've been putting up with the effects of the surgery to have it removed, which have proved to be a far greater and far more literal pain in the ass than the original problem.

Then over the past few weeks I've had my birthday, quickly followed by my prelims and people telling me I have to decide where and how I want to spend the next four years of my life and that I need to learn to drive or else I'm doomed...

All in all, I've not been having a great time over the last few weeks, and the quality of the last few months has been less than average.

I'm hoping things will pick up in a while. Once the prelims are over, I'll be able to relax more and that may well coincide quite happily with the end of my hospital visits as well, the way things are going. I intend to spend the entirety of that first weekend off watching old Doctor Who serials. Specifically, that Key to Time marathon that Sam and I have been planning to do since I got the boxset at Christmas.

I refuse to delay it again.

Of course, me saying that I refuse to do something doesn't necessarily mean it won't happen (see yesterday's promise not to play Mass Effect today). And me saying that I will do something doesn't necessarily mean that it'll happen either. Like my promise to my mother that I would shave off this strange proto-beard I've been growing over the holiday.

Actually, I probably will do that.

Oh, and if I say I'll probably do something... well, then you're getting into some serious crazy quantum stuff and it's way too late at night for me to explain that.

I'm going to bed.

Have a nice day.

Not even worth titling properly

Well, I managed to get some work done at least. It wasn't much but it was a (very late) start. My plans have now shifted to a combination of Maths and Computing tomorrow, then panicking for Maths on Thursday.


I really have completed wasted my day. I flicked through some notes, played some more Mass Effect*... and that's about it really. I've no idea where the time's gone.

I suppose my lack of concentration isn't helped by the fact that my wound has been acting up a bit, making it very uncomfortable to sit in my chair. And my neck still hurts. There's not really anywhere else in the house I can go to be undisturbed, or to sit in a comfier chair and be undisturbed. In fact, my brother's started making a habit of coming into my room to play TimeSplitters, so even my inner sanctum can get noisy without my own intervention.


Aaargh. It seems like the more I think about my day, the more depressed I get and the more my head and neck hurt. Maybe this is stress. Or some other kind of psycho-babble. I don't really care at this point.

I'm calling this a crappy post and going to bed.

Have a nice day.








*I really need to stop playing that for the next week or so. Maybe I should do what I did with my iMac's power cable before the last exams and just tell my sister to hide it so it can't distract me.

On revision plans and ridiculous names for budget laptops

Once again, I've spent the whole day doing nothing. I could normally justify taking the weekend or even just Sunday off but that would only be possible if I were taking them off from doing something.

My current plan, and I'm absolutely sure I'll follow through on this one, is to do Maths revision tomorrow, Computing on Tuesday and then more Maths on Wednesday. I'll have some time after my Maths prelim on Thursday afternoon to do any last minute stuff I need to do for Computing. Then I'll probably take Saturday off and go from there, working on my Computing project and Physics revision.

It's not a great plan but it seems reasonable.


Nothing much else to say. I was meaning to do a woodle but I haven't got round to that. I might do one for next Saturday but I know there's one I definitely need to do for the Saturday after that, since it needs to stay pretty current.

I'm still playing my way through Mass Effect. I'm starting to get into the swing of things now, having got to that bit that shows up in most games like this where you're pretty much free to wander around and advance the plot at your own pace. Still not quite sure how the biotic combat powers are supposed to work but I'll figure it out.

I'm still working on my Eee, adding software and looking into mods. Oh, and I figured out what I'm going to call it – Eridani. Technically, Eridani, or Eridanus, refers to the constellation, which contains the trinary star system of 40 Eridani. Within that system is 40 Eri B, the first white dwarf star to be discovered.

So Eridani is basically a nickname for my laptop, whose full name is 40 Eridani B.

Interestingly, the 40 Eridani system is also usually thought to be the home system of the Vulcans from Star Trek, although that fact has never been explicitly stated on screen. There's just some corroborating evidence involving distances and some mentions in non-canonical books like tech manuals. But hey, fanon has to start somewhere.


Well, it's getting late and I've said everything I need to.

Have a nice day.

Titles are easier when you have topics

Holy crap. It's just gone past four o'clock and I feel like it should still be the morning. I got up just before noon and had just enough time to turn on my computer and have some lunch before I had to have my shower and go into hospital, wait for about half an hour, have my dressing changed and then come home.

All in all, I didn't get to actually start my day until just after three.


As a consequence, I've done absolutely nothing of any consequence. That's really making me very worried now. Tomorrow, I'm determined to do at least the equivalent of one Maths prelim paper and to look over some of my Computing notes. With any luck, I'll also have time to sort out the design for my Computing project.

That might just be wishful thinking but I've got little else at the moment.


I've no idea why but I'm feeling quite tired. And my neck is still sore. Still, I've got a couple of points to get through before I wrap this up.

First of all, it's more or less official now that Toshiba have killed off the HD-DVD format. This has a number of important repercussions, the most important being that I now owe Sam Stafford a tenner. We made a bet a couple of years ago over which would be the victor – obviously, he supported Blu-Ray while I went with HD-DVD.

The fact that we were planning to settle the bet on January 1st 2010 shows just how much of a surprise the sudden departure of HD-DVD has been. In the last few months, Toshiba's lost many important allies to Sony's format, mostly due to the resurgence of the PS3. I know people who are buying PS3s purely to use them as Blu-Ray players. That'll probably stop once prices of standalone players come down but Sony is probably hoping to have enough of a foothold by then to get by on profit from software sales.


Our second item of news for tonight is that I'm trying to come up with a name for my Eee PC. As you may or (more likely) may not know, Sam and I have a system for naming our computers. Old or second-hand systems are named using jokes, usually puns or funny references. Hence, my seldom-used Linux box called Linus (a reference to Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux) and my Mac LC called Lucy (Sam was originally going to call his LC Lucy but I convinced him to use Luke instead once I realised the potential for a Peanuts reference).

New computers follow a different pattern. Sam names his after moons (his Mac Mini, which he'd just got when we started the system, is called Luna) and I name mine after stars, hence why I occasionally refer to my iMac as Deneb. Moving outwards towards the edge of the solar system, Sam named his Eee after the smallest moon of Mars, Deimos, and I'm currently examining white dwarf stars for mine.

I should have a name by tomorrow.


Bah. That's it for now. You know, when I get my priorities sorted out and start doing these earlier in the day again, I've got a few things I want to wax lyrical about. The current weather, for example. Sort of not quite winter and not quite spring. I like it.

But I need to get to bed. I probably won't because I'm having a discussion about the mysteries in Life on Mars which may drag on but it's the thought that counts.

Have a nice day.

More of all the stuff I usually mention

If my day were a game and hours were the points, Mass Effect would have beaten revision 5-nil.


And now you see why I never use sports metaphors.

I did play a lot of Mass Effect though. Five hours is probably a good estimate, with a little rounding. Sadly, nil is a good estimate for my revision time as well.

On the bright side, I did spot and dig out from under a pile of my other crap some more Maths notes, including my practice prelims and the sheet which tells me what topics are going to be in my exam. It's not exactly pulling an all-nighter but it's progress nonetheless.

I was reassured (mildly) by Sam telling me that he's done no revision at all. I say mildly because a) Sam doesn't take Maths, just its way easier, no-need-to-revise-for-it arch-nemesis, English, and b) he's a lazy git.

Turns out that one of the many reasons he hasn't done any work is that he's got himself an Eee PC as well. He went with the 2 gig version and spent the extra money on an SD card to make up the memory and a DVD rewriter since he needs an optical drive to put Windows on it and he apparently wanted one for his Mac Mini anyway.

All he really loses out on with his version, other than the memory, is a small increase in processor speed and the inbuilt webcam. It seems he was willing to sacrifice those to get it a bit faster (the 4 gig version, of which mine is one, is still out of stock almost everywhere). Last I saw of him, he was copying a cut down version of XP to a thumb drive to try and boot from that. I'll have to ask him how that went.

As I hate being outdone in the general geekiness department, I decided to enable the desktop mode on my Eee while he was doing that. All it required was a few command lines and some package installation and it now has a full desktop GUI, though I may set it to boot up into the simpler one just for convenience.

Now that I can install and access non-default applications, I've also added GIMP (the image editor), Audacity (everyone's favourite open source audio editor) and versions of Bejeweled and Minesweeper (because I have way too much time on my hands).

I'll probably play around with it some more tomorrow, after I get through with (or when I need a break from) doing some actual revision. Now that I have the sheet saying what I need to do, Maths doesn't seem quite so daunting. I figure it'll start being daunting again once I start actually doing the work but I may as well enjoy this brief respite while it lasts.

I also need to get on with my Computing project. As I can't be bothered using my Beaten Up Old Laptop^TM every time I want to work on it, I've decided that I'm going to steal the little Thinkpad that my brother got for university a couple of years ago and which is now only used by my dad for his office connection once every so often.

I could theoretically work on it on another computer but, to be completely honest, I just want to sit at my desk and have two laptops and my iMac in front of me, running all three major operating systems. I'll probably laugh maniacally to myself and pretend I'm some sort of hacker supervillain.

I can but dream.


And that's it for tonight. Nothing much else to say, except that I'll probably have a woodle up tomorrow. Now, I'm off to bed before this headache gets any worse so...

Have a nice day, I suppose.

My neck's better but now I've got a headache

I really need to tidy my room. I was just looking through some drawers to find a packet of Blu Tack so I could stick up my exam timetable when I came across my provisional driving license. I'd totally forgotten I had that thing.


So my exams start one week today. In fact, looking at my timetable, this time next week, I'll just have come home from my Maths prelim. With any luck, I'll have had time to recover a bit and have some lunch before needing to start last minute Computing revision.


My head's still killing me so I've sort of given up on revision for now. Making last minute use of the BBC iPlayer to catch up on Ashes to Ashes so that I can watch the second episode tonight. It can only go back 7 days so at first I thought I'd missed my chance, since the day selection only went back to last Friday. Turns out the content from Thursday was still online though, assuming it was on at a later time last Thursday than the current time. If that makes any sense.


Okay. Watched Ashes to Ashes now. A bit meh, to be honest, but it has promise. I don't particularly like the new main character but she may yet grow on me. The second episode was on tonight, so I'll watch that tomorrow and see if it gets better.


I think that's all I feel like saying tonight. My headache has yet to subside and I really need it to be gone by tomorrow so that I can get on with my studying, so I'm gonna head to bed earlier than normal. By which I mean, before midnight. I'll call this a mini-post and those traditionally end with some amusing links so...

Ah, Doom. King of all shooters, according to some. Didn't really work out so great as a comic book though.

And speaking of amusing comic books, here's a few more over at the appropriately titled Stupid Comics.

You know what? I don't link to Superdickery often enough and it seems to fit with the theme I've got going here. So go there.


That's all.

Another post about stuff I did during the day

Things that tell you you ought to keep you're desk tidier number 1013:

Moving an old copy of Retro Gamer to discover several pieces of unopened mail marked January.


In addition to the aforementioned tidying, I also managed to get some revision done today. It wasn't much, just going through a Computing prelim that I don't think I even have the answers for, but it was a start. I expect to get more done tomorrow, now that I've finished watching Life on Mars. Well, after I've watched the first episode of the sequel series. And the Torchwood episode they showed on BBC 3 tonight.

Speaking of Torchwood, it was pretty good tonight. They toned down the melodrama a bit, which made the characters a whole lot more likeable than usual. There were a few similarities to a certain Star Trek episode (and I'm sure it's been done in other media as well... come to think of it, I remember a plot synopsis for a Torchwood novel that had a similar basis) and an episode of Red Dwarf, of all things.

Still, it was pretty good overall, if you're willing to pave over a rather large plot hole involving the character of Rhys. Which I am, since I rather like the character of Rhys. He was a jerk in the first season (then again, so was everyone else) but now he's been rounded out a bit, it's become clear that he's the only person in Torchwood who doesn't have some kind of glaring mental defect.


What else have I got to talk about...

I said yesterday that I was going to talk more about Assassin's Creed but I ended up not playing it any more so that'll have to wait for now.

I didn't play any more of Mass Effect either, though I did play some more of Link's Crossbow Training and a couple more Advance Wars missions. Crossbow Training is actually a lot of fun, if fairly easy. It certainly fulfils its simple purpose of showing off (and justifying the price of) the Wii Zapper.

Oh, and I've done a bit more writing on the background of The Grey Line. It's funny how just sitting and bashing out ideas on the keyboard can help me solidify them. Maybe it's because I have them all there in one place, rather than drifting separately into my mind from time to time. I've been able to combine a few plotlines so that it hangs together better as a whole and I've sorted out a few problems with the physics.

I'm not going for hard science fiction or anything, but I do want it to be internally consistent. The problem came up because, while I don't want time travel to be a regular or easy thing, I did have one story (from the earlier, more carefree days) that I didn't want to give up but which required a form of time travel.

Also, trying to do more writing about them has made me realise that about half the cast don't actually have names, or at least not full names. That's probably something I should work on.


That's everything I think. Now, if you'll excuse me, my neck has been killing me all day and I deeply desire to rest it upon a pillow. Although that may just make it worse.

We shall see.

Revision, Assassins and Miscellaneous

You know, it's on days like this, when I'm sitting at my computer, sunlight streaming into my room, casting intricate shadows on the floor, that I realised just how dirty my windows are.

Seriously. They're filthy.


Well then... that whole revision thing... yeah...

I didn't do any. I moved some folders around and slightly cleared up a desk so that with a little more shifting of stuff I can use it as a work surface but other than that, I did nothing.

I'm determined to start properly tomorrow. I figure the best thing to do would be to try out some of the prelims to see what I need to learn and then focus on Maths and Computing, since those are my first two exams. I'll probably have to look more at Maths but I'm determined to do more than I strictly need to for Computing.

I've managed to get a prize every year for about nine years in a row now and I'm not failing my last chance. I figure Computing's my best bet since I won it for Higher last year, beating out the rest of the class in the prelim, and... well, I don't reckon I can do it in either of my other classes to be honest. I'm not bad but I know there are people better than me who deserve it more.


Anyway, let's forget about revision for now (because if I think about it any more it's just going to depress and annoy me).

I played Assassin's Creed some more today. Assassin's Creed is apparently one of those games that you either love or hate. Most reviews indicated that it's pretty repetitive so if you like the kind of stuff it does, you'll get plenty of it, but if even one section annoys you, it's all going to go downhill very fast. I hadn't liked it very much when I played it at school but I figured I might like it a bit more when I could hear the dialogue and take my time with the game.

Turns out I was wrong.


You know what? More on Assassin's Creed tomorrow, or maybe some other time. Turns out I have an awful lot of ranting to do. I may even turn it into a proper review. For now, here's Zero Punctuation's look at it.


I figure I'll try to divide up tomorrow between sessions of study and sessions of Mass Effect for balance. No idea if that'll work out well or not. I might also try to get a bit more writing done – I've taken some time today to type out some of my thoughts for The Grey Line, the first time I've done so in a long while. I think I've mostly resolved, in my head at least, some of the problems of the sci-fi and fantasy elements residing in the same universe.

Which may have just given away some of the plot. Or maybe not. We shall see.


For now, I'm off to bed. I was told today, after yesterday's more optimistic view, that my wound may still take a few weeks to heal, which means it almost certainly won't be done before the end of the prelims. Calling it “incredibly annoying” would be a gross understatement.

Still, nothing I can do right now, unfortunately. Well, nothing except get some more sleep and get up early tomorrow morning again.

Have a nice day.

Insert Title Joke Here

I hate short holidays. I take a day to relax and I feel like I've wasted time that could have been much better spent on something else. And that feeling basically defeats the whole point of taking a day to relax in the first place.

Other than the odd late-night feeling of despair and hopelessness, today's actually been a pretty good day. Went into hospital in the morning and got some good news – I should be done in about a week. Nothing definite but a lot closer and a lot more specific than anything I've got in the past. At the very least, I should be done before my prelims start, albeit cutting it a bit close.

Sam came round in the afternoon and I gave him those revision sheets I was keeping for him – fat chance he'll use most of them but at least it's one task done for me. We spent most of the time either playing Link's Crossbow Training or watching Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged and Homestar Runner on my Eee. That thing really is becoming ridiculously useful.

We also dug out and watched a Simpsons episode which came up in conversation for some reason. It was that brilliant one with Hank Scorpio. I'm trying hard now to remember why we were all thinking about it but I honestly can't – I just keep reminding myself of scenes from it and laughing.

Other than that I've mostly just been browsing the web and watching Life on Mars. Still, that counts as a good day in my book.


I've also had a few good ideas regarding some of my creative endeavours. Sam agreed to do a woodle more-or-less weekly so I'll get him a precise script (I already gave him a rough description this morning) and the first one should go up next Saturday.

I've solved a few problems and come up with some more background information for The Grey Line. One of these days, I may actually write some of it down. On an even more unusual day, I might just show it to someone.


Anyway, I think that's about it. Haven't really got through much of the list I set out yesterday but... ah, well. Time to go to bed.

Have a nice day.

More things to do

11:09 counts as the morning as well.


I really need to change my sleeping habits. Getting up late is all well and good for a couple of days but I always feel like I've been wasting my time afterwards. It's back into the annoyingly normal routine of going to hospital in the early morning tomorrow so I'll have no choice but to be up and about by eight at the latest.


Aargh. I just finished a session of Link's Crossbow Training. I'm getting pretty good at it now but playing it for about an hour straight does tend to make your arms a bit sore. I may as well keep typing because it's just going to hurt anyway and I want this out of the way.

I've got a few things going round in my head that I want to do so I think I'll take a second* to write them down, in no particular order.

1. Revise. Obviously.

2. Tidy my room, if only so I can find my revision notes.

3. Write thank you letters for my birthday presents, however much it may annoy me.

4. Something else which I remembered a few minutes ago but has now slipped my mind again.

5. Do some work on The Grey Line.

6. Make some woodles. I may even do one later tonight if time permits - I realised as soon as I had posted yesterday that I'd forgotten to do one then.

7. Figure out what number 4 was.

8. Do something, anything, about VersusCOM. Write a sketch, think about game news items, scribble something on the back of an envelope. Well, maybe not that last one - Mum gets a bit touchy about wasting envelopes for some reason.

9. Sell some of my junk and unwanted games. Come to think of it, that was probably what number 4 was meant to be.

10. Strike number 7 off this list as I've now probably done it.

11. ...I'm sure I had an 11 but my Eee crashed on me and the document recovery only got me back to number 6. Not sure why it died but it's been running, albeit mostly in sleep mode, for most of the day. Got pretty hot too - I had to do some impromptu air cooling. By which I mean holding it at an open window.

12. Take slightly better care of my brand new laptop. This includes such things as turning it off more often and not holding it at open windows, as well as generally trying to avoid situations where the latter becomes necessary.


I think that's about it for now. Not much else to say and not much time to say it in. Revision starts on Tuesday so I probably ought to try to get the most out of tomorrow. Well, I say revision starts on Tuesday, no idea if I'll hold myself to that. I certainly hope I will.

We shall see, I suppose.



*Re-reading this, I find that statement particularly ironic seeing as it was written at around one o'clock and it's now fast approaching midnight.

First Day of a Short Holiday

So it turns out that the Eee's version of Open Office does have languages other than UK English. The spell check still seems a little off though - it wouldn't let me select any other languages last night (I found another way this morning) and now it doesn't find anything wrong with the phrase "Englash is awexome". Maybe it'll catch on to it later.


Ah, the first day of the holidays. Remember, even if the clock says 11:48, it still counts as getting out of bed in the morning.

I finally got around to playing Mass Effect last night. I played for a couple of hours and got a pretty good feel for it. The conversation system is very interesting but I've yet to be completely convinced by the combat and "talent" systems.


Okay, so it's a lot later now. I haven't really done much all day. As I said, I woke up late so that there wasn't much point in starting anything much before my hospital appointment at two o'clock. I hate going into the ward (rather than the normal treatment room) but I have to at weekends. The afternoon appointments do give me a lie in but it's usually a longer wait and the nurses up there don't see it so often and usually seem to put in a bit too much packing.

Today's appointment was pretty quick but I got the whole "it's looking much better than last time" speech again and I'm really starting to get sick of it. If it's getting so much better each and every bloody time, why isn't it bloody well healed yet?

Bah. All I can really hope for now is that it'll be done before the prelims start. I'm determined not to become complacent about it. I tend to ask every couple of days and as soon as I get told that I could probably just put the dressing on at home, I'm done.


Enough of that. It's getting very late in the day now and I tend to get more complainy around then. Doesn't help that the alarm just went off downstairs for no particular reason. It seems to just be a fault with the phone line but Mum's still being paranoid about it and insisting on checking everything. She just called me through to ask if the lights on the wireless range extender were all right, as she'd never seen them like that before. I had to patiently explain that one was the power light, one showed the network cable was plugged in an one showed that the Wi-Fi was active – and that all were perfectly normal and always on.

Other than the things I feel like complaining about, I've not done much else all day. Haven't really played any games – did a bit more of Advance Wars in the waiting room but I haven't touched Mass Effect, Link's Crossbow Training or any other of the half dozen or so games I keep meaning to play more.

My Life on Mars DVDs arrived this morning so I've been watching them a lot. I quite like it but I'm not entirely convinced that it's as great as everyone says. Maybe it's just backlash from the hype. Oh, well. I'll keep watching all the same.

And that's about it. I'm basically just resting up now because I know that I'll have to start doing revision and so on at some point soon. Probably on Tuesday, since I want to spend tomorrow playing some of the games on my list and I was thinking of having Sam round on Monday, if only to give him some revision sheets that he missed getting on Friday.

I really have to wrap this up now. I've no idea how it got so late but I have to get this post up within about fifteen minutes or... well, or nothing really. But I've got nothing else to say and I want to get to bed so I may as well stick to my self-imposed, arbitrary deadline.


Oh, and one final side note. Today, my mother dismantled Citizen Cane. He shall be sorely missed by all who knew him and who had used him to remove objects from high up areas.

Which reminds me... isn't there still a flying disc thing stuck on the roof from a while back? Did we ever get that down?

I forgot to mention that I finally played Mass Effect tonight

Back on the Eee again, just for a laugh.

I still can't quite get over just how small this thing is. Any previous laptop of mine, and the vast majority of models on the market today, would either crush your legs or boil your blood (often both) if actually sat on your lap. On the way home from school today, however, I took it out and typed up a script for a little comedy sketch. The only problem I encountered was the motion of the car itself.

It continued to be useful at school. I managed to get some of my Physics project written up, in between people stealing it to play Frozen Bubble and Penguin Racer.

That's another thing about the Eee. Even with my crappy old laptop, I only left it in the common room knowing that it was password protected and after telling a friend to make sure no one would use it. I can't imagine ever being willing to take in an expensive ultraportable along the lines of the MacBook Air into school. I'd never be happy leaving it alone and I wouldn't want it in my bag lest it somehow get scratched or damaged.

Yes, the Air and its expensive ilk can do more, but I think I'd be too frightened to use it to its potential, even if I did need such facilities while on the go. With the Eee, I'll happily leave it lying around when I'm not there and when the day's over it gets bunged in my bag along with some crumpled Physics sheets and my pencil case.

The whole little package just seems so durable and robust. Okay, so it's probably not what you'd take on a trip to the Sahara or into the rainforest but it feels solid enough to handle every day wear and tear.

I'm even considering doing some mods for it. Sam, who was off school today due to illness, says he spent most of his free time looking up details on the Eee PC and now seems determined to get one of his own. He says he's found this relatively simple mod that'll give the Eee a touch screen, the components for which only cost about £35.

Assuming he can get a copy of XP cheap enough (or, by some means that I don't wish to discuss for legal reasons, for free), he'll be able to put together a touchscreen, Windows laptop for less than £300. And, since he's doing English for which he'll only really need a word processor and, in the words of my Computing teacher, some "dusty old tomes", it'll likely be enough to get him through several years of university, along with his Mac Mini.

I know I seem to be waffling on about it a lot but I've just become really attached to this little thing. It's useful, fun and practical straight out of the box with the potential for a lot more, for people who know how to find it. And, eventually, I hope to be one of those people.


Anyway, time for something else. An amusing anecdote from my day at school, in fact.

I recall wistfully the days of primary and early secondary school, days when exams were unheard of, when homework took ten minutes and when the length of essays and projects was given in pages rather than words or experiments.

Back then, writing up essays on computers at home was quickly becoming the standard and everyone swiftly realised* that increasing the font size was far easier than writing more words. After all, a small increase in font, say by 4 points, could change a ¾ page essay into a 1½ page one. 2 wasn't even much of a stretch, provided you knew your way around double spacing.

I had cause to wonder this morning if someone hadn't been a little overzealous in their application of the same technique. The only other, and more likely, alternatives were some sort of accident or practical joke.

When we arrived in Computing this morning, lying beside the printer was a huge stack of paper. At first glance, you might think it had been a teacher printing out several booklets of notes or something when the photocopier was in use. The only clue to their origin was that on the top page, in landscape orientation and something like size 90 font, the words "Asgard is" was written.

Flicking over to the second page, we found "the Viking" and carrying on we found page after page of one or two words, including ideas about "the home of the gods" (about three pages) and something so exciting that the exclamation mark following it somehow got its own page.

Comparing it to a packet of printer paper lying nearby, we guessed that there must have been about 150 pages of it, repeating at least a few times. It wasn't until our teacher checked the network logs that we got anything exact - it turned out to be the same 29-page long document (or, quite possibly given the font size, the same sentence) printed out 6 times.

We were never told, though the logs probably said, who printed it (well, whose account it was printed on - would you do something like that under your own username?). The Vikings are one of the topics done in P7 so we guessed that it came from there.


You know, I think that might have been much more amusing if I had got to the point an awful lot faster. I do tend to ramble on a bit. I suspect that it's something about this little keyboard. It takes a while to get used to but once you do it's quite comfortable and I can type remarkably quickly with it.

That's about it for tonight. I've just checked the clock and realised how close I'm drawing to my arbitrary deadline. I may still get a woodle up tomorrow but Sam, who I was relying on for the art, was off school today and doing something after school yesterday, so I've not actually had a chance to tell him about it yet.

Maybe next week. I'm considering changing it to something more based on my own experiences, though still with some random, gag-based ones. Like the Tech Support 2257 series, which I guess would now be Tech Support 2258. I've still got a few old ideas for that kicking around, plus the original images, so I might put together one of them.

Wow. This has gone on to three pages now. I can't even remember when that last happened. But like I said a couple of paragraphs back, I need to wrap this up for tonight.

Have a nice day.






*And I just realised now that this version of Open Office only has USA English spell check.

This is basically just an update on yesterday's post

Coming to you straight from his now wireless-enabled Eee PC, it's everyone's... what's between favourite and least favourite? Like, right in the middle. I don't know. Doesn't really matter. Anyway, it's me, Alasdair Corbett. Not between least favourite and favourite, I mean here right now, typing this.

Typing, as I said before, on my Eee PC. I'm not quite sure what was up with the Wi-Fi last night. I definitely tried the correct password a couple of times then but I suspect that wasn't the only problem, since the family desktop and another laptop were having the same problems at the time.

This little thing has already proven surprisingly useful. At the very least, it's been a fun and helpful gadget. I took it into school today, partly to use it, partly to show off. Both plans worked out fairly well - I managed to type up some Computing homework and I intend to use it for a Physics report tomorrow and throughout most of lunchtime, it was taken from be by a gang of Frozen Bubble addicts.

Did rather distract me from my Maths revision though.

But the remainder of the test went well enough. It has got me a bit scared for the prelim though. Not just the difficulty of the work but the sheer volume of it in such a short time. I'm still not hugely concerned about Computing. The only problems I've had so far with the practice stuff consisted of not knowing a few facts and some badly worded questions.

I'll try the official questions some time during the holiday but I know from experience that they'll be of better quality. As an example, the paper I was doing for homework tonight (which stopped me playing Mass Effect again but did allow time for some more of Link's Crossbow Training) ended with a question on searching, giving a list of terms and asking you to compare the efficiency of two algorithms when looking for a particular term.

Of course, it didn't bother to tell you what term you were searching for, a small fact admittedly, but one that's rather vital to the answering of the question.


I'll say this for the Eee - once it gets a grip on your cables, it does not like to let them go. I stuck my headphones into the jack to watch a video a few minutes ago and now I can't get them out again. Maybe if the end of the cable had a larger grip it would be doable but these are just little iPod ones and they're simply refusing to come out.

I'm currently trying to rationalise this away. It'll loosen up after a few uses, I expect. Maybe it's the fact that it's quite warm; heat making the metal expand, perhaps. I can deal with it in the morning either way.

And that's about all I've got. if I remember, I'll try to get a woodle up on Saturday. Don't get your hopes up but I have some ideas and I know an artist with way too much free time on his hands.

On budget laptops, new games and the joy of decades-old television serials

I just came in from school (after a fairly hefty delay due to one of the main roads being closed) to find my Eee PC waiting for me. I'm just going to get something to eat and then set it up. More later.


It all seems very impressive so far but I've been running into some trouble while trying to connect to the wireless network. I've double-checked the password and the settings but it just doesn't do anything. Curious.


Well, after a bit more tinkering, I still haven't got the Wi-Fi to work. It came with one week of free tech support though, so I guess I can try that either tomorrow or at the weekend. Or during the week after that, in fact, since we go on holiday after this Friday. That would be a good thing, if it hadn't just reminded me that immediately after the holidays, my prelims begin.


I haven't got round to playing Mass Effect tonight, even though I said I would. I've been too busy fiddling with the Eee, in addition to my usual routine. I did manage to play Link's Crossbow Training for a while. I'm not entirely convinced that the Wii Zapper is such a brilliant peripheral but it works well with this game, simple as it may be. I haven't done anything beyond the first set of levels yet – the urge to chase high scores is just too great.

The only minor complaint I have is that the sensitivity and alignment settings aren't unique to each Mii profile. An odd design but I can live with it. It'll probably only be Erin and I using it and she seems to like the same settings as I do.

Hold on a sec, I've gotta watch Torchwood. Will I like it this week?


It was all right. A bit melodramatic in places but, well, it's Torchwood so melodrama's pretty much par for the course. Watching a bit of classic Who now, The Time Warrior, the serial which introduced Sarah Jane Smith and the Sontarans. It was one of the ones I got for my birthday, along with Carnival of Monsters (which has fast become one of my favourites) and The Hand of Fear (featuring the last regular appearance of Sarah Jane).

I still have a few more DVDs that I want to get out of the shortlist I made before my birthday. I got some Amazon vouchers for Christmas and that ought to cover a few. I'm planning on buying Life on Mars at some point, probably soon so that I can catch up and watch the sequel series as it happens. Someone said that it starts tomorrow so I'm going to miss the first episode at least but I'll try to record it.

Shows like Life on Mars that have a planned backstory and arc always make Doctor Who seem all the more strange to me. Every modern show almost has to have some kind of extended story between episodes and will usually have characters and plot arcs fleshed out years in advance. Shows like Heroes, Lost and Prison Break are the clearest examples of this (though the amount of long-term planning in some of them is... debatable) but even largely episodic shows have some connection between episodes. Such as the new Who series, for instance.

But getting back to old Who. The Time Warrior was broadcast just over ten years after the start of Doctor Who, from December 1973 to January 1974 and it was the very first serial to name the Doctor's home planet as Gallifrey. It had taken two years for another Time Lord to appear in the show (not counting Susan), five years for the now iconic sonic screwdriver to show up and it was six before the Time Lords were named as such and appeared as a proper civilisation.

In the scale of Doctor Who, it's not very much. But those ten years would be like the entirety of the first two Star Trek series going by without Starfleet being mentioned. It would be more than halfway through the original series before another Vulcan appeared and we wouldn't even know they were called that until Commander Riker grew a beard and told us so*.

I'm not sure why I find that all so fascinating but I do. There's such a history associated with it and a complicated weave of plots and characters far greater than any single series could come up with today, even, or perhaps especially, if it was meticulously planned out.


A couple more things before I go. I'm not sure what the problem is yet but it seems that a couple of other computers, namely the family desktop and my mum's laptop are having difficulty connecting to the wireless network as well as my Eee. It could be related but they're both a wee bit temperamental anyway so I'll probably still put in that call to tech support, assuming it doesn't all fix itself.

Also, I've got the last part of that Maths test tomorrow. It was technically only meant to be for two days but no one's got it finished and it doesn't really count as anything other than practice anyway. I think that with a bit more time I should be able to get through it but it's got me a bit more worried about the prelims now.

Physics might also be a problem. I'll really need to do some revision on that front. Computing, I'm not so bothered about. It should be fairly easy but doing the practice papers is proving to be annoying. The commercially produced ones, as opposed to the actual exams from previous years, are always quite low quality, often having questions that don't make sense or which give far too many or too few marks for a particular answer.

Anyway, I'll deal with them later. By which I mean tomorrow, since the first one is due in on Friday morning. Bah, I'll figure something out.


I keep having problems concluding these posts. It's worst in the ones where I keep darting from topic to topic, such as... well, most of them. Including today's. I'll just have to fall back on my normal, poorly-planned escape route.

So, loathe as I am to admit to being unable to come up with anything more creative, have a nice day.






*If you don't get the reference, find the geekiest person you know and have them explain it, even though you probably won't like the answer. It's nothing bad, just boring.**

**If you think my timing is a little off with these references, then you're probably the kind of person that people will go to if they need it explained.

Another Look at Another Day

More good news about my Eee PC – it looks like it's finally been dispatched and should be arriving either tomorrow or on Thursday. We paid for next day delivery but the cut-off point for want counts as “next day” was 4pm and I'm not sure if it shipped before or after that point. I certainly didn't realise until after that and I think checked it near the end of school so... probably Thursday.

It would be nice if it did come tomorrow though. I have a feeling that I'm going to screw up the second part of my Maths test as well (first half was today and, as you may have surmised, it could have gone better) so having it waiting when I come home would probably cheer me up.

Otherwise, I'll just have to spend the whole night playing Mass Effect. Woe is me.


Nothing much going on at school today. We got a revised version of the prelim timetable. We were told that it was because some minor changes had to be made to the schedule but the real reason was fairly obvious; the first copies didn't have any room numbers. Knowing when our exams are going to be is nice but knowing where is also fairly important.

I spent most of the morning revising for and taking the aforementioned Maths test. Computing was fairly uneventful as we spent most of it trying to make an online 6502 emulator work with some sample assembly code. Our teacher got it to work but none of us could so we suspect it might have something to do with the different web filters on the different accounts. Whatever the reason, we didn't get much work done.

At lunch, I deliberated over whether or not I should do the Physics homework I had only been reminded of right before the Maths test. Most of the rest of my class hadn't done it either and those who had tried said it would take far too long so we all just left it. This strategy worked pretty well, although our teacher not even asking for it helped a lot.


Thinking back, I've been tired for most of the day. I normally don't even properly wake up now until I'm actually getting out of the car at the hospital and the cold air hits me in the face. By lunch time, I'm so tired that I can hardly concentrate on my work. Admittedly, everyone was talking during Physics (my only period after lunch) so it could have been that but I've not been able to focus on doing any revision at home either.

Anyway, I forget where I was going with that other than the usual “I hate these constant hospital appointments” and “I'm very tired” stuff. So nuts to it.


I'll finish up with a link to an article I read at The Daily WTF today. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before but, in case you don't know, it's a site that updates daily with bizarre tales and practices from the world of IT. A few of them require some basic technical knowledge to get but this one's fairly straightforward and interesting.

It's also worth taking a read through some of the featured comments.

And that's it for tonight.

Something a bit lighter

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that my Eee PC is due to arrive in stock before the end of the week and should get delivered not long afterwards. I haven't got a specific date yet but progress is progress. Also, I've finally got a Physics report handed in on an experiment we did as a class some time before October. It's two pages long, including diagrams and a graph, and I'm one of only three people in my class of eight to have finished it. Ah, the Sixth Year work ethic.

The bad news is that I've developed a rather painful infection in one of my toes, I've done hardly any revision for my Maths test tomorrow, I still need to do some more work on my Computing project, not to mention any work on my Physics one, and I've just remembered that I probably have a presentation to complete for Wednesday, on a topic that I probably ought to look up at some point. Might have something to do with processor architecture.

There's also some mildly interesting but largely mediocre news – I finally got the timetable for my prelim exams later this month. The school is on holiday for about ten days beforehand, then I personally have two days off before Maths in Thursday 21st, followed by Computing the day after and then a big gap before Physics on the following Thursday. That's the last day of exams so, for some inexplicable reason, we have to go back into school on the Friday for a one day week.

It could be better (Computing on the Monday would have been quite nice) but I know people with worse schedules (such as two exams on one day) so I guess I can live with it. I fully intend to spend the weekend after the prelims finally watching my Key to Time boxset with Sam. We were originally going to do it in the Christmas holidays but never quite got round to it.

And speaking of getting round to things, I still have a number of things to... get round to. I've been playing Advance Wars pretty heavily since I can take that into school and I had it at my friend's house over the weekend but I still haven't opened Mass Effect or my Wii Zapper. I've made a start on the DVDs I got for my birthday, beginning with Carnival of Monsters, a surprisingly good Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who serial.

Mostly, I have a huge stack of books to read through. Maybe I'll pile them up at some point, purely to amuse and shock myself. I'm currently reading AHistory, which is an attempt to reconcile all the major Doctor Who media (all television serials/episodes, including spin-offs, up to 2007 plus most comic strips, novels and audio plays) into a single timeline. I'm still at the origin of the universe and there have so far been about five different “first” civilisations, two of which have specifically been the first humanoid ones.

It's an interesting read but I think I'll put it aside for a while to finish a few other things. It's not really meant to be read all in one go, I suspect, and I wouldn't mind familiarising myself with some of the other media before proceeding.


That's it for tonight then.

Other than one little factoid that's just occurred to me. I started this “post a day for a whole year” thing on March 1st last year. I've known for a while that the end was getting close but I've just now noticed that it will fall on the Saturday immediately after my prelims. And the 365th post will be the day before, since this is a leap year.

I suppose I'll have to come up with some way of resolving that... or I could just do what I usually do and churn out a little mini post in the few moments I can spare between changing discs during the Key to Time marathon.

After all, it's pretty much traditional around here not to comment on special occasions until they've been and gone.

Admittedly, it's usually because I forget about them completely, but the point is still valid.

Warning: Really Depressing

Well, I'm back home now and have been for some time. I considered beginning this post shortly after I got back home but decided against it, because I was too busy not doing anything.

I feel that I probably ought to talk about what went on over the weekend but I'm not sure there was much to say. I spent an awful lot of time, particularly when there were more people around, playing Advance Wars. We watched some films, including A Fistful of Dollars, From Russia With Love and, my personal favourite, Space Jam, on an old video that was lying around.


I'm sitting here and thinking about how best to continue this post. I have some thoughts on the whole experience but I don't really feel like sharing them and they'd probably just be boring anyway. On the other hand, I don't think I have much else to say.

For now, I think I'll just keep my thoughts to myself and write about something else.

My wound is apparently healing quickly. Or slowly. Or an average rate. It all depends on what nurse I ask. I'm still expecting it to be over with by the start of the prelims but I would really love to have it done sooner, so I could enjoy my holidays and get some revision done without interruptions, and if it goes on longer I may well scream.

My mother still feels the need to remind me every so often that I need to do various things that she wants me to do anyway to help it heal, as if she's under the impression that I don't want it to. The whole thing's just getting incredibly frustrating, as are constant reminders about prelims, driving and university courses...


Bah. I'm in no mood to write a post now. I've got my homework done so I think I'll just post this and get to bed. Tomorrow... I'm not sure what I'll do. I really ought to get some Maths revision done and I haven't done any more work on my Computing project since my teacher last saw it. At this rate, it's looking like I won't have any free time until the holidays.

And even then I'll have to do revision, have driving lessons, go to hospital, work on my projects and put up with people reminding me that I should be doing all of the above whenever I sit down...

Like I said, I'm not in the best mood for this sort of thing.


I'm going to bed.

Reporting from Elsewhere

I'm at my friend's house now and I don't think I'm going to get near a computer anytime soon so I've come up with a plan. I'm typing this as an email to myself so that I can log on to his computer later and copy and paste it into Blogger.

It's been pretty good so far - essentially just a load of junk food combined with various DVDs (we're watching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace as I type) and very little sleep.


Well, it's a bit later now. Still nothing particularly interesting or important goinng on which is fine by me. And I've just realized that, with the occasional help of the predictive/corrective typing, I'm actually getting quite food at typing on the iPhone.

Which, incidentally, knows how to correctly capitalist it's own name, unlike some word processors which shall rename nameless.

We watched the Family Guy Star Wars parody Blue Harvest* both yesterday and again today so Jimerson could see it. It had its moments (a nice Doctor Who reference and a Sean Connery impression spring to mind) but they were few and far between and the second viewing revealed little depth to the humour.

I'm going to send this now because I can't remember if I can save it and I want to check my emails without losing this message. I probably won't post without adding more but I'm lazy and bored so who knows what I'm capable of.


Managed to get on a computer while everyone else was distracted by Guitar Hero. Still nothing much going on. I think I'll just post this now to simplify things. This way, I can go back to playing Advance Wars and occasionally looking up if someone laughs that much sooner.

Have a nice day.



*Which I've just found out was titled for the codename of Return of the Jedi, used during filming to avoid fans gathering around and to stop people assuming they had a huge budget and overcharging them during production.

Away for the Weekend

So it looks like I'm going to be spending the weekend at a friend's house. His parents are away for a while and he doesn't want to spend the whole time by himself so a few of us are invited over to stay from tonight through to Sunday, with a party on Saturday night.

I'm not sure if I'll enjoy it (parties in particular aren't really my kind of thing) but it seems like something I'd regret not going to once I heard all the funny stories and so on so... why not? If I don't like it, I'll have proved that to myself once and for all and can comfortably spend the rest of my days as a hermit. If I do, then I'll have had a good weekend.

It does pose a couple of problems though – first, I'm going to need to get picked up, taken to hospital and dropped back off again on Saturday. I just won't be coming back after the one on Sunday. That means that I only have Sunday afternoon to do any homework that I need to do, which includes redrafting a Physics report and a load of Maths revision. I'll also have to do my Saturday blog post from his house somehow.

I was planning to have a quiet weekend after my quiet birthday to watch some DVDs and play some new games (played Advance Wars most of the day at school, still need to try Link's Crossbow Training and Mass Effect) but I suppose I can live without it.

On the bright side, my day went fairly well. I normally have three lessons and a mentoring period on Fridays but Computing didn't happen because my teacher was away, I got out of Maths because the class I normally sit in with was doing a test and I just had to do revision anyway and I wasn't needed for my mentoring. Basically, I spent the whole day in the common room, talking to friends and playing games until last lesson, when we went to Physics and did absolutely no work.

I mentioned yesterday that no one really remembered my birthday – turns out one guy did, hid the present in the room somewhere and promptly forgot all about it until today. Another also remembered but was off yesterday. So that made things a bit better.


I've not got much else to say and I'm in a bit of a rush since I need to get something to eat before I go and I still need to pack a few things. Can't really think of a good way to conclude this post so I guess I'll just end it abruptly.

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.

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 up my account for my iPhone. It was the two main soundtrack themes for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I rarely buy songs. I rarely watch a movie, or even a TV series, twice through, especially in quick succession. But I truly love this film. Maybe it was just the atmosphere in the common room that helped me have fun with it, but during the later scenes, I was on the edge of my seat.

It's a truly great film and if you haven't seen it, I can do nothing but highly recommend it to you.


As for me, I'm going to think up some kind of pun as a title for this post and then retire to bed. It's been a busy day, somehow. Tomorrow should be nice and easy, seeing as how I have first two lessons off (during which time we fully intend to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and then a couple of lessons, followed by lunch and the infant/junior department nativity play in the afternoon.

Have a nice day. I did.

Christmas is Coming

Still not much closer to finding Christmas presents for my cousins. Narrowed it down a bit, I suppose, but considering that my sister has managed to acquire what seems to be several dozen presents for her friends in a matter of days, I'm having a surprising amount of trouble choosing something.


I think I've managed to get most of my Maths homework out of the way over the course of the evening. There are still a couple of questions that I'm struggling with but I don't have Maths till Tuesday, so I can take some time tomorrow to ask either my teacher or a classmate for some extra help. Of course, half of them seemed not to know how to do it either, so that's okay then.

I've no idea why I'm finding all this stuff so hard – I look at it and I know that I should be able to do it, I just have trouble concentrating. I'm fairly lazy at the best of times, it just seems worse now. Maybe it's a combination of pressure from other subjects and the approach of the holidays making me want to either focus elsewhere or wind down a bit.

Which reminds me, tomorrow is the first day of the last week of the school term. My school gets early, and long, holidays, partly due to the fact that we don't take bank holidays and the like off during term time and partly just because... well, because it's a private school and there's nothing that says they can't. I guess.

The Christmas service is on Friday morning, after which we break up until sometime in early January. I'm not sure if I'll be able to go or not. The initial concern was that I'd have a hard time sitting on the pews, which aren't exactly designed for luxury, but I reckon I could probably handle them for a couple of hours. I may still have a problem getting from the hospital to school by the time the buses leave for the church, though.

As much as I dislike the long-winded church services and the religious attitude of the school in general, I would quite like to be able to go. It, along with the other term ending ceremonies, always provides a nice way to round things off and start the holidays, in my opinion.

Still, I'll just have to wait and see what happens and how I'm feeling on the day. Until then, provided I can make some progress with both my Advanced Higher projects, the remaining days until the end of term should be fairly relaxed and fun.


I suppose I probably ought to get off to bed now. Top Gear was on late tonight, so Erin and I watched it in my bedrom, and James in his, because our parents wanted to get to bed early because they've both been ill over the weekend. That's kind of thrown off my timing a bit, as has the fact that I was meant to be in bed immediately after it finished. Over an hour ago. Thus, I'm paranoid that every single little creak outside my door is someone coming to yell at me and threaten to switch off my computer because I'm not in bed.

The argument that, technically speaking, they aren't either, probably won't work, so I'm going to very quietly type this last sentence, put this online and then get some sleep.

I'm rather proud of this one

I've been poking around gadget websites and toy magazines all day, trying to find something to get my little cousins for their Christmas. I normally get them something, ever since the year that Hamish, the elder of the two little boys, bought me a notebook and presented it to me as soon as he arrived on Christmas morning. My aunt said I was the only person that he insisted on buying something for.

A few weeks later, I spotted a Gamecube going cheap and, knowing how much he enjoyed playing ours whenever he came over, I bought one, along with a secondhand copy of Mario Kart: Double Dash. Ended up costing me about £40 but the look on his face when he unwrapped it, as well as the way he picked up the box that must have been half his height and ran to tell his mum what big cousin Alasdair had got him, made it worth every penny.

For reasons I am completely at a loss to explain, I'm pretty good with children and, for equally unknown reasons, Hamish and his little brother, Tristan, idolise me. A few weeks ago, my mum somehow ended up speaking to Tristan over the phone and, after he immediately asked if I was there, she told him I was at school but mentioned that I'd be getting him a Christmas present. She said later that she could hear his face light up over the phone.

I would have got them something anyway, but from then on there was no turning back and there had to be no chance of disappointment.

Thus, I return to my original point – I've spent the day idly trawling websites and catalogues trying to locate a gift for each of them. It's been fairly hard, not because they're hard to shop for, but because the kind of gadgetry they'd like, I also like. My Christmas list has doubled in size, probably too late for anything to be done about it.

Other than the stuff I would love to have now, it's amazing how much stuff for them I'd have liked when I was their age. Tristan can't get enough Power Rangers and Hamish loves LEGO; both are big fans of Star Wars, Transformers and anything Doctor Who. With the obvious exception of Torchwood. I don't know if either of them are really big fans of it, but Action Man is still proving as popular as ever, judging from the pages he gets in the Argos Christmas catalogue. Fewer guns and jeeps and more X-Treme!TM sports than I can recall but, hey, welcome to the era of political correctness and sheltering your children.

Come to think of it, the only things on that list that I've “grown out of” are Power Rangers and Action Man. And that's mostly because Power Rangers totally sucked after Billy, the original and greatest ever Blue Ranger, left.

Anyway, I'm slowly narrowing down the list based on what I think they'd really like and what I think I can afford. Thus, despite the sheer awesomeness (and road legal-ness) of the custom-built paintball tank, the fact that it costs £8000 puts it a little outside of my price range. I'll have to figure something out by the end of tomorrow, so that I can get everything ordered with enough time to spare.

Well, that's eleven o'clock now and I have to get up before eight o'clock tomorrow. It doesn't sound so bad, but I'm normally asleep until noon on Sundays and I haven't had a lie-in in... well over a fortnight now. How does the saying go? Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

I suppose the whole hospital thing is designed to make me healthier and I'm already fairly wise, so all I need is the wealth. Which I intend to squander on paintball tanks and arcade tables, not to mention all kinds of other, smaller things, that I can bring home from the shops on my own personal hovercraft.

I did it!

Success! I have finally completed my life's goal!

I have completed the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES, a game I've owned since... well, since as far back as I can remember, anyway. That game practically defined my childhood. Kind of nice when you think about it – I got it in nursery school and completed it in Sixth Year.

That single little achievement has been enough to cancel out almost all the day's other woes, from failed Maths tests to general boredom and annoyance at the rest of the world.

Speaking of boring and annoying things, it looks like I'm still going to need my wound dressings changed every day past (and including) Christmas. And then I'm probably going to need further treatment to keep hairs away from the area for a long time (years were mentioned) afterward.


I've left this post really late for some reason and I've been distracted by trying to find a copy of Twinworld for the Amstrad CPC. So it's now quarter to midnight and I've got no time to write anything else.

Sorry for the short post. But I don't really care. I've completed Super Mario Bros. I'm on top of the world.

That's it from me. I'm off to... well, not to bed actually. I'm in the middle of an MSN conversation. But once that finishes and I do a couple of other things, I'll go to bed. And then tomorrow I'll wake up and try to get some comedy writing done (had a few more ideas for a CSI parody tonight) then do my Computing project and my Maths homework.

Have a nice day.

Neutral Overall

It's funny how a couple of bad experiences towards the end can turn a good day into a crap one so remarkably rapidly.


I don't really want to go into details since it would probably be boring and that would annoy me further. Suffice it to say that I stuffed up some stuff, mostly schoolwork, which isn't so bad in itself but which has combined with getting a lot of crap from various people and the general inconvenience and annoyance brought on by my surgery to really get on my nerves.

I could make a pun about the surgery and the difficulty of taking (a) crap afterwards, but that would be beneath me. Still annoying though.


On the bright side, I got to talk to my old Physics teacher, Mr Cook, at school today. He's a great guy and always fun to talk with. He had been in school handing around some Christmas cards to former colleagues because he'd be going away on holiday for a while and didn't want to miss some members of staff who were leaving after the end of term.

He was apparently going to Portugal to play golf for a week, having been asked by a friend who had had someone drop out of their group at the last moment. Such is the life of a retired old man, apparently. Sounds pretty cool, to be honest. If you like golf.

So it was nice to see him and chat for a while about school and life in general.


I think I'm in a better mood now. Seems like it was a smart thing to do to focus on the positive aspects of the day rather than the negative. It might all be ruined by the nightly shouting match in a few minutes but I'm hoping to avoid that by going to bed early.

I also get to get up late tomorrow morning – I have an appointment to see a consultant at the hospital just after ten o'clock, so there's no point in going in for just one lesson before leaving again. It means I miss Computing, which is annoying, but not that I miss Maths, which is equally annoying. Because I haven't done a large chunk of Maths homework and there's no way I'll be able to get it done tomorrow.

Oh, well. I'll figure something out and do it over the weekend, along with my Computing project and Physics research... I thought the end of term was a time for winding down schoolwork? Meh. I'm off to bed.

Sock Fluff

There are a lot of disadvantages to being unable to shower when you want and I honestly didn't see several of them coming. For instance, I started wearing some new socks today, my old ones being more like badly made nets than fabric now, and this naturally leads to much fluff on my feet.

This normally isn't a problem since it comes off in the shower... except I'm not having a shower at night so the fluff just kind of stays there, stuck between my toes and annoying the hell out of me.

...

I know, I know, I'm weird. Deal with it.


Anyway, it's 25 to midnight now so I really ought to finish this up. I got distracted by an interesting MSN convo. I've really not got much else to say tonight and I have a Maths test tomorrow (for which I've done very little revision) so I ought to get to bed. Technically, I ought to already be in bed, but I'm not going to quibble over a technicality when it doesn't benefit me.

I'll call this a mini-post then and end by linking you to this... gimme a minute while I search my bookmarks... this Wikipedia article on Big Rigs, a truly awful PC games that I only found out about a couple of days ago. May even be worse than ET. Which, incidentally, I have a little more sympathy for, considering that the original developer had created some real classics before hand but was given only five weeks to do ET.

Anyway, I'll also point you to the latest statement from GameSpot about that whole review/advertising scandal thing I've mentioned before.

That's it from me. Have a nice day.

Badly Bandaged Boy

Worst superhero ever.



CSI: NY just declared that since someone passed a lie detector test, they're not lying. Don't even get me started on the idiocy of that statement.


There are certain games that never lose their appeal, no matter how many times I play them. Either because of great design and plenty of options in the single player mode or because of a brilliant and balanced multiplayer mode, these are games that I will gladly take out and play at any time.

Among these games is Advance Wars, in all its shapes and forms. Thus it is that I am held up from writing this post by a desperate need to carry out a carefully planned strategy involving about eight transport copters and the same numbers of mech units before I go to bed.

Gimme a couple of minutes.


Okay, that's that done. Now, about tonight's post... I've really left it too late again, though I have a slightly better excuse than usual. I think I've complained before about the inconsistencies in how my wound is dressed by the various different nurses at the hospital and how some methods seem to work better than others.

Today's method didn't work out so well. It had practically fallen apart by the time I got home from school. This necessitated a trip back to the hospital where we think we've finally discovered a bandage that stays in place well enough.

We also had the foresight to find out what it's called for future reference and the nurse made a note to say I was to have this kind from now on, so that's hopefully that minor problem sorted.


Other than that, today has been pretty uneventful. My Maths test and homework, both originally set for Wednesday, have been put back to Thursday and Friday, respectively, which is very lucky, considering I'd done no revision and I wouldn't have had time tonight.

My Computing project continues to progress, though it looks like it may run past the deadline into the Christmas holidays. I'll have to do more of it at home, since I don't want that looming over me, especially since I'll likely have finished the interesting part, the problem solving and the programming, by then and it'll just be documentation and testing, the boring parts.


And that's about all I've got today. Somewhat diary like but I've not had any fascinating thoughts occur to me lately. I think I've been spending too much time watching, and subsequently complaining about, CSI: NY. Really, some of the plot holes and twists in that show... I don't know if all this is a result of bad writing, natural cynicism or too much time spent over at the TV Tropes wiki.

Probably some combination of all three.

One way in which I'm disimilar to Garfield

Well, another near-lessonless Monday, come and gone. I took my old laptop into school today, the one with no battery. Managed to get some Visual BASIC done for my Computing project, in between watching Monty Python DVDs. When I started doing the latter, I said that if anyone asked, I was programming in Python. Rather depressingly, out of the five or so people in the room, Skippy was the only one who got such a geeky joke.

I got a fair bit of actual work done, though I would have liked to get more done. The basic groundwork is certainly in place and I just need some advice from my teacher on how to link together a few parts of it. Assuming I don't come under much more pressure from tests or other projects, I should be able to get it done by the end of term deadline.

Unfortunately, I have utterly failed to do any other homework, including the large amount of Maths that's either overdue or due in very soon. I did manage to rattle through some Physics, but since it's due in tomorrow, I didn't exactly have much choice in the matter.


Beyond that, several people, myself included, got some university places confirmed today. I mentioned before that I had got a couple of unconditional offers for Edinburgh's Computer Science and Physics courses but I hadn't quite realised just how impressive that was until I mentioned it to a girl in my class. She pointed out that only two people from our school got accepted into Edinburgh last year and promptly gave me a large hug.

Then we both got confirmation of places at Aberdeen, which was where she really wanted to go, so that led to much screaming and joyous phone calls while the rest of us just stood around looking somewhat bemused.

What this means for me is that I'm basically just waiting to hear from St Andrews, which is where I really want to go, though I haven't entirely ruled out Edinburgh yet. In turn, this means that I'll probably be using my iPhone a lot more at school, checking my emails once a minute.


Oh, come on, NeoOffice. How can you not have a problem with “email” but think that “emails” isn't a word? Bah, nuts to it.


I think I'm going to sign off now and head to bed. I'll probably have to spend a fair chunk of first two lessons tomorrow trying to do Maths homework and revision.... And I've just remembered that I'm going to be getting in late. Possibly problematic, methinks...

Ah, well. It'll sort itself out. See you tomorrow, when there should hopefully be more information on this whole GameSpot firing incident.

Afternoon and night are becoming very similar

It's half past six and it's pitch dark outside. Has been for the last two hours or so. That's December for you, I guess.

It's certainly starting to feel more and more like Christmas. My normal way of judging when the season begins is the first time I come across a Coca-Cola Christmas advert and I heard one on the radio a couple of days ago.

I know it's an unusual way to judge the start of such a well-defined period but it's proven remarkably accurate over the years – particularly as most other companies seem to kick off their Christmas marketing in late January these days.

There is, of course, also the ever reliable advent calendar* for keeping you up to date with the countdown to Christmas but they don't seem to carry enough significance for some reason. Unless they have chocolate in them


Anyway, it's a fair bit later in the night now and I still have some stuff to clear away and pack for school tomorrow, so I'll try to wrap this up pretty quickly, if you don't mind. Well, I'd do it if you did mind anyway, since I don't know who you are (mostly) and thus I don't care about your opinion. Which reminds me, need to get those visitor numbers from Skippy.


While the days are getting shorter and lights that were hung across streets in early November have had their lighting up ceremonies, I haven't quite got into the Christmas spirit entirely yet, despite that distinct sense that it's there around me. I guess I'll relax a little once the holidays arrive and I can stop worrying about various deadlines (several upcoming tests plus my Computing and Physics projects needing to be finished and started respectively before the end of term on the 14th) and start worrying about what presents I'm not going to get.

And that reminds me of something else; I need to check that my mum has ordered that copy of OS X Leopard. She's something of a technophobe who barely understands what it even is let alone trying to order it off the Apple website, so I doubt it.

But you never know. My brother may have helped her or something.


One final point. As much as I dislike writing about (and hearing about and being asked about and, especially, having) this pilonidal sinus thing, I feel I have to mention a couple of things about it. The first is good news and the second is a minor annoyance. The good news is that it seems to be healing nicely, despite the fact that I'll apparently still be needing fresh dressings every other day until the new year. I've at least been able to go through today without taking painkillers. I suspect I'll need them for bed though.

The annoying thing is a sub-annoyance of the whole “having to go into hospital every morning” thing. While it never came up last week, when I went in both today and yesterday, the nurses were under the impression that I was to have a bath before the dressings were changed. I told the one yesterday that I had one at home and I figured that'd be the end of it but no, it happened again this morning. Twice, with two different nurses.

The second part of this is that I've never had the same kind of dressing twice, and half of them have been useless. Either they don't cover enough area or they simply don't stick on and require some emergency use of some old surgical tape that my mum had in a cupboard somewhere.

What I can gather from all this is that, filed somewhere in my local hospital, is a little note that says I need a bath at the hospital, which I don't, but not what kind of dressing I should have on the wound. Not exactly inspiring stuff.


Enough about that now. I still need to do those things I mentioned needing to do a few paragraphs of complaining ago, so I'm gonna go do them and then I'm going to take some painkillers and get to bed.

Have a nice day.






*My current one is a semi-3D sled thing with a cut-out of Santa in the middle. Don't look at me like that.

Time, Crocodiles and Journalistic Integrity

I thought this post was going to be rushed but I've actually been able to take my time on it. Incredible.


I got up an awful lot earlier than I normally do on weekends today because I had a hospital appointment. That, and the fact that it's getting dark around here before five o'clock, has really screwed by natural body clock. As opposed to my unnatural body clock, which I had surgically implanted several years ago so that I would always know the time. It's really useful but it makes me seem kind of like that crocodile from Peter Pan.

As such, the day has gone by really slowly for me. Not slowly enough for me to actually bother to do any kind of work or anything, but I feel that it's taken noticeably longer for me to go from waking up to writing this.

If the same thing happens again tomorrow, and I don't get distracted by practice Maths prelims and Visual BASIC programming, I might find the time to sit down and write a bit more of The Grey Line. Some interesting plot points have been coming together in my head recently, I just need to figure out where to incorporate them. I also need to focus a bit more on ideas for the beginning since it's the part I'm actually writing.


I've been watching this story (work your way up from the bottom to see it progress) with great interest. Essentially, a reviewer (Jeff Gerstmann) over at GameSpot gave a mediocre review of the game Kane & Lynch at the same time that the publisher of said game was running a huge advertising campaign on GameSpot.

Not long after, Gerstmann was fired and rumours started flying. See the link above for all the details and rumours, some of which are just silly (the suggestion that he didn't play the PS3/Xbox 360 game the full way through simply because his Xbox Live account doesn't have enough achievements) and some are a bit more grounded (the obvious implication that either the publisher or the GameSpot higher-ups didn't like the negative review of a big game).

What I will say is that, if corporate pressure was indeed the cause, then it reflects very badly on video game journalists and the industry upon which they report. I'll keep my eye on it for now and maybe voice a more definitive opinion once more is known (i.e. once all the relevant parties stop saying “no comment” to every question).


Well, I'm off to bed because my eyes are starting to hurt and I'm getting too tired to type. See you all tomorrow. Whoever you may be. That reminds me, I need to ask Skippy for the visitor numbers for the last few months...

Complaining and etcetera...

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

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

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

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


But enough about that. I'll just link you to a few things then be on my way to bed. I don't even get to have a lie in tomorrow morning since I have to go into hospital again. Apparently, I may