Blog - January 2005
14:45 - 30/01/2005 - Dilemmas -
I have been considering buying myself a wireless keyboard and mouse. I had two main reasons, one, better performance, as my current keyboard has been broken for the past 4 months and I would have thought a laser mouse would have given be better performance than optical. My second more important reason, is that if I had a wireless keyboard and mouse I would be able to clear them off my desk easily when I had work to do. So everything seemed to be pointing to getting these lovely new things but! I've had a chat with John (aka gangee) and it would appear that you get very slight lag between clicking the mouse and response on the Pc, which wouldn't be a problem for office monkeys and alike, but I'm a gamer and it would quite probably drive me insane. So it appears I won't be going wireless, just like I've kept my CRT monitor (being over 8 times faster response than the best LCD screens out there).
I'm still very very bored, I need to join some clubs I think, I've been looking at my new year's resolutions and as it so often the case I've done neither/none of them. The problem is, the courses this term are, at the moment at least, far more boring and uninspiring than last term, and last term was bad! The other problem is I'm quite lazy. There always seems to be a reason that I haven't joined a gym or a karate club or just done something, at the moment it's that I was ill eariler in the week and I can't speak because of the stupid mouth ulcer, which is probably the best excuse I've had all term. I think once I can speak again I'm going to (not honestly I really am) investigate the tennis clubs, because although I suck at tennis I quite enjoy trying to play!
Another thing that's been bothering me is that I want to rearrange my room, but I don't know how I could rearrange my stuff without rendering most of it useless. The main problem is the computer (with the CRT monitor I mentioned eariler) takes put almost the whole desk, which means I can't do any work. Not that this actually bothers me but if I had a desk I might do a bit more Physics, which is the reason I'm here. There is nowhere to move the computer where I could still actually use it, and everythign else is placed accordingly, so put simply I want to rearrange my room, but I can't. Now I'm going to see if there are any washing machines free and then make myself a late lunch.
17:35 - 29/01/2005 - Still Bored-
I'm still very very bored. I've still got that ulcer on my tongue, but it's not as painful now and it's starting to heal. It could have been teh ulcer, or possibly something else, but on thursday I had a fever and felt very bad so I left lab after an hour and went to sleep until 5pm. Then oddly enough waking up on friday I felt fine, bizarre. Now that I'm not feeling so ill anymore, & I can do stuff I've realised again, that I'm bored!
I was quite enthusiastic about co_fracas, the combat map I was making for Natural-Selection, but I've lost interest in it now, it's not going the way I want and layout of it sucks. I might just delete half of it and start over after planning a layout. Something I am going to have to do is my final lab report for this year, joy! I should probably just get it out of the way this weekend, but I doubt that'll happen, which is silly considering I'm so bored. You'd also think if I were this bored I might spend sometime making a good blog entry, but as you can see for yourself I've just made another 'this is my life at the moment' post, which while it maybe vaguely interesting it's not gonna get anyone thinking about it. Well anyway, I think I'm too tired to think straight, I'm just gonna shower and then cook some pasta, which I'm sure you really wanted to know... I'll shut up and go away now.
21:25 - 26/01/2005 - Incredibly Bored -
Nothing seems to entertain me. I've done quite a lot of stuff this afternoon, including copying up my assessed problem sheet, among other things. After I'd finished all the things 'to do' I've been watching various special features on different DVDs, yet it was boring. Watching Red Dwarf Series II while playing FarCry kept me entertained for a while, but the Red Dwarf ran out and FarCry kept crashing. I'm just in the kind of mood where nothing entertians me, I want to do something, but everything I do just seems insubtainal. Might tidy up this room, that's a big job, might feel like I'd managed something then!
The ulcer on my tongue ain't as bad as it was yesterday, but I still sound retarded when I speak, but that should go away soon, unfortunately looking retarded won't =p. I've made an appointment to be stabbed in the arm (MMR Jab) for monday and I'll talk to the nurse about silly amount of huge mouth ulcers then I guess. Sorry my blog over the last few days has sucked. I'll try and write something interesting soon, it'll give me something to do. On reflection tidying this room is gonna take a long time, so I can't be bothered to do it tonight...
10:15 - 25/01/2005 - Don't Speak! -
I can't speak, this is because I have a mouth ulcer, on my tongue, which is just retarded. Small good thing is that we were meant to solve some problems for the seminar session and then people will be picked to go through them to the rest of the group, but I forgot, yet as I can't talk hopefully I can be excused =). Oh don't you just love it when you wake up in the morning and it takes you 10 minutes to work that your feet are cold because the duvet has managed to rotate by 90 degrees. Before I go, I'd like to say "Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring, BANANA PHONE!"
20:20 - 23/01/2005 - Wrapped Up -
I didn't want to get out of bed today, but I did want to blog, so I'm sitting in my chair all wrapped up in my duvet, least I think that's what it's called I'm a little hazy on blanket, duvet type things, which is almost as comfortable. I've had a great weekend, Friday night me, Rachel, Rob, Emma, and Emma (that was confusing when they sat next to each other as well) went to TGI Fridays and I think it's fair to say we stuffed ourself silly. On Saturday Rachel, my Parents and I went shopping in Oxford street, and then as Rachel (and myself to a certain degree) didn't feel particularly good we went to a Tandoori Resteraunt in South Kensington (as opposed to going to a place we know in Lester Square) which was still quite yummie.
I got many funky things for my birthday, from Rachel I got a 'ty' Fish called Googy, which is ace, I got the secondary phase of the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy on CD and a cool shirt that I wore out. I got a couple more Isaac Asimov book, a couple of cool gadjets, a couple CDs and a couple of Video Games (FarCry and Price of Persia II). I also bought myself a couple of CDs in the sales, another book and Stargate Series five (as it was £35 instead of £60). What I haven't bought anything of resently is food and I've used all my milk today so I have bacon, a couple of slices of bread, and pasta or rice, think I'll try making myself something after this episode of Stargate, I fortunatly don't have episodes to develop an addiction like last time!
17:40 - 20/01/2005 - Nearly 19 -
Oo! I'm nearly 19! Haven't got much to say today except that I'm a happy Harry, did a bit of maths just for the hell of it eariler and I quite enjoyed it. Plus I'm now working on my own for lab, so I'm getting far more done and it feels like I've accomplished more when I get a good set of results (although mine weren't too good today but nevermind). In the spirit of this new workingness, I'm not going to do any coding / mapping or anything like that on the PC tonight, instead I'm going to try to go through the electronics course so far, allowing me some other time to go through Vibrations and Waves and the Maths too, although I'm pretty up to date with the maths. Bar duty the other night was actually pretty damn enjoyable. We got my mp3 player hooked up to the music system, although the cable used was somewhat dodgy so the sound was a little fuzzy but people seemed to enjoy it, although the first thing I played was the compiliation CD w0z made me, thanks w0z! It was rather quiet, until 10:45 when 3 people came and ordered 4 pints each, well whatever makes them happy. I got 3 £1 Tokens for 5 hours work... hmmm, is that legal? Oh the discount prices in the bar (that I hardly ever use) is my payment, oh really? If you say so then.
17:15 - 18/01/2005 - Site Rejiged -
I've done that rearrangement of file locations into something more organised in the hope that I shouldn't have to change it again. Although going through every single separate page there is for my vinyls reminds me to see if I can set up MySQL and write some php to merge all those pages into one. I've made a few other changes too but you guys probably don't care :P. I'm going to start cross posting with Livejournal too.
On other notes I've got bar duty tonight that is going to be a royal waste of time, but possibly enjoyable. I told my personal tutor that I'm bored, he doesnt' seem to have a solution for me but I can't say I blame him. It's my birthday on Friday :D, I should possibly be more excited than I am, but I did already get my big present from my parents, which owns! I've got loads of things that I need to do that I've been meaning to do for some time, like join a club that involves some sort of physical excersise for starters, I'll keep you posed on how I do, though I'm not going to get anything more done tonight, silly bar duty.
17/01/2005 - Some Site Reorganisation -
I've finished my seminar report thingy, so now I've got no work with a dead line until next friday, so I've now got some time to work on other stuff. One such be the titlesake which is that I'm going to rearrange the site format a little and have all my blogs in a subfolder, and have a simple intro page as the 'index' page rather than this months blog. I'm also going to try to start getting enthusiastic about my combat map again.
Starship Troopers is such an ace film, it was just on Channel 5 you see. Channel five has been showing some pretty damn good movies recently I have to say. Oh and for all those that think that the movie is shocking'll bad you probably don't understand what it's trying to say, then again you might and just care. Though to be fair the former type of people probably won't be reading my blog, more likely to be google image searching for porn.
16/01/2005 - An Interesting Weekend -
It has been a most interesting weekend, some good like I've got a lovely mp3 player for my birthday (Sony HDD Walkman - 20Gb), got to see my family and best of all to see Rachel. Some not so good, like I'm coming down with something flu like, and the VW polo's passenger window exploded this morning. At the moment I'm extremely tired and watching enemy of the state and as I'm feeling ill my brains not working well so I'm not going to go into too much detial, but I'll give a more in depth review another time... possibly.
14/01/2005 - Paradoxically -
Something odd is happening, I went to bed at 11 pm the night before last, and when having to get up for labs my brain didn't want to work, understandbly. Last night I went to bed at 3 am and then get to get up for 9 am lectures, then I was perfectly awake understood both lectures and finished the classwork, in fact my brain is working better than it has for the past couple of months. I think it might be the mapping, I've been doing rather at lot and it makes the mind work. Click here, here, here and here to see some pictures of what I've been doing, I cba to thumbnail them.
Going home for the weekend which should be quite ace, I get to see lots of Rachel. I'm also going to be putting together my dad's new PC from dell and setting it up for him. Next weekend it's my birthday :D. Me, Rachel, Rob, Emma and Emma are going to TGI Fridays for a meal on friday, then my parents are coming down on the saturday, not totally sure what we'll be doing then but I'm sure it'll be fun :D. Anyway I'm going to go make me some lunch munch now.
12/01/2005 - The Key to Success -
Is actually trying. Sounds obivous but I think I need to bear it in mind more often. I didn't actually get much work done today, but I did quite a bit of mapping and bought train tickets to go home this weekend. I'll put a thumbnail, which you can click to expand, of the hive room that I built this morning. After designing the layout in the Vibrations and Waves Lecture, which was again extremely boring, the lecture that is, not the designing, I quite enjoyed that. I shouldn't say that though, I've resolved myself to making more an effort and taking more of an interest. Yeah well anyway I've got to go put my washing away and stuff. I'll try and writing something entertaining soon. Oh and the picture is meant to be dark.
11/01/2005 - Over 46% -
Over the last 4 and a half days I've spent over 46% of my time (including sleeping) watching Stargate, that's gotta be i) some sort of record ii) harmful in some way. I now suddenly have 'free time' in which I can do anything! Well not quite anything, but there are many options open to me. I have a strange desire to watch them all again, but I'm not going to, least I'm going to try not to. Some Halo / Natural-Selection should distract me for a while at least.
I apolagise for bitching about my course for the last few entries, but I have come to the conclusion that, at the moment at least, it sucks. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about that though, oh I got my first terms marks back, I can't remember exactly what I got but it was about 93%. Not bad I guess! But I was making myself take an interest in the first term, and unless I get back into it my marks are going to suffer. meh, I don't care, which is in fact exactly the reason they are going to drop. Oh well!
10/01/2005 - Stargate Addiction -
I'm not sure it is entirely possible to become addicted to a TV show, but I think I came pretty close in the last couple of days! Stargate SG-1 has eaten up my weekend, admittedly in quite an enjoyable way, but I didn't really get anything else done. It was like I was unable to stop myself putting the next DVD in when the last one finished, and whenever you'd reach a natural end point, like the end of a series or ocassionally just the end of one DVD, and it would be a 'To Be Continued' so I'd have no choice but to start the next DVD!
Yeah anyway, TV is off now, and although I have time enough before my first lecture to watch an episode, I will not! I managed to do a little work on my combat map, I'm reasonbly happy how it's turning out, except for Marine Start, which at the moment is a little lacking, but really at the moment I'm just slamming down brushes to get the layout modeled before I forget it all, and I can refine and improve it later. I'm still quite annoyed about the course, I might talk to my personal tutor about it, though really I have no idea what I'd want to do with my other than this course, plus my parents just paid out about £1800 for this terms accomadation. I'm probably just not having enough fun in my spare time.
08/01/2005 - StarGate Overload -
I recieved 3 series of StarGate yesterday afternoon, and I've already watched one series, I'm sure it can't be healthy to watch stargate for every waking hour of a weekend. For starters I've just run out of proper food, so I'm going to have to go shopping tomorrow if I want to eat, which I do. I'm still acutually watching stargate now, which is why it's taken me almost an hour to write a few lines of text. I'm going to give up writing now, watch the final episode left on this DVD then go to sleep and try to do something more productive tomorrow.
06/01/2005 - Happy Sandwiches Help -
You'll be glad to hear (least I hope you will) that I'm feeling much happier, I've got most of the APS done, just 1 and a half questions to go, and I've just had one lecture which was quite interesting and one which was ace, and it's stuff that we've already done, and I still thought it was ace, so I'm looking forward to the rest of that lecture course. I got a lovely letter from my charming girlfriend and a small gift too!
A few things aren't perfect, for example, the kitchen is broke so we have to go to the SCR for our meal, but I may use it as an excuse to get some fast food. I've just been charged about £1700 for accomadation this term, so I'll be ringing my dad to sort that out! Finally, ofc, I'm having quite a lot of difficultly with these relativity questions on the APS, but I'm just gonna do my best, and then hand it in worry free, because all you can do is your best and I've got an average mark of > 90% so far so I can afford to lose a few marks on this one, plus it's only first year problem sheets all of which add up to 1% of my degree.
05/01/2005 - Why Am I? -
Why am I doing this stupid course? At the moment I've learnt hardly anything new, and nothing actually useful. I'm holding on in the hope that in the second year it's actually going to get interesting, rather than, as it is at the moment, reviewing stuff we did at A-level, over and over and over again. I mean today we did Simple Harmonic Motion, possibly the most boring thing ever, ooo we used the exponential form instead of sines and cosines, big fucking deal...
As you can probably tell I'm not in the best of moods, comes from being separated from my family, friends and most importantly Rachel. Also having shitty lectures doesn't help either. I haven't done any web log entries for the past couple of days, but that's because nothing interesting has happened. Watched Pitch Black with Rob and Emma, and have ordered 3 series of StarGate SG-1, because they were £22 instead of £60 from amazon. I'm going work on my combat map for NS now, I hope someone will notice the Hard Trance reference in the title though I doubt it.
02/01/2005 - Back In London! -
Well I'm back in London again, for a second term of jolly physics learning. I however have to re-learn all of the first term as I seem to have forgotten it. Oops! Oh and not to mention a Lab Report to finish for Tuesday and an assessed problem sheet, that I haven't started, for the end of the week, *gulp*.
I'm just watching the last episode of the first series of Stargate SG-1, I might have to treat myself to the second series as a birthday/christmas present to myself, it is sixty pounds though! I will be getting one thousand two hundred and eighty pounds in my bank soon though :D. I do have to live off it, not just spend it, shucks. Well I'm going to go to bed early so I can finish my Lab Report tomorrow, night all!
01/01/2005 - Chlorinated Chicken, Unique Skills and a Happy New Year -
First and foremost, Happy New Year everyone! We had a 'party' at Rachel's House, the inverted comma's because there were only 7 people, but I think everyone had a fun time so that's all okay! Everyone was quite drunk, but I personally don't have a hangover so I hope it's the same for others =). Now Rachel brought to my attention that I have failed to mention a few interesting things in the last couple of days so I shall review them now.
First me and Rachel went for a very nice meal at the Taste of Paradise on Newport Highstreet, now it was extremely tasty but most of the chicken, especially in the stuffed pepper starter (which I would recommend to anyone who likes peppers and chicken), smelt like that smell you get at swimming pools. As we were drinking quite a lot of wine I decided to call it chlorinated chicken for the remainder of the meal.
The Second interesting thing is I had to pay for Rachel's half of the afformentioned dinner because I bet her that she couldn't undo my trousers using only her mouth. She proved me wrong. Now finally I shall list my new year's resolutions, which were actually just stuff I was gonna do anyway, but it does mean I'm more likely to keep them! There are either 2 or 5 depending how you look at it.
New Year's Resolutions:
1. Do more Physics!
2. 'Re-earn' Black-Belt
Where the second could also be considered as:
2. Get Fit
3. Get more flexible
4. Get Stronger
5. Join a Karate Club
So in other words, go to a Karate Club and a Gym... Probably should have just said that, Happy New Year Everyone!