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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!