RFC 1149 (aka: Procrastination)

One of the least fun ways of avoiding coursework is to browse the RFC archives for interesting standards. A particular favourite I found a while back would have to be RFC 1149 - the standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers.

One note not presented in the RFC, that I think gives this standard a great advantage over others, is that no wired or wireless connection is required between parties - now all we need are some really well trained birds, who can first carry laptops (with a lot of spare batteries) out to remote tribes, and who'll then give them the ability to torrent Desperate Housewives. Very, very slowly.

If you're still looking for a way to avoid your coursework, you might want to try reading these extremely helpful tips on How To Stop Procrastinating. After that, I'd suggest looking up Procrastination on Wikipedia (I won't link you, that'd spoil the fun) and following every link you find, until you get to a page that contains the letter 'x' more than 10 times.

I'm great, y'hear?

Took part in another final year research project today - it's pretty fun volunteering for them, you generally get some free sweets and you also get to see a bunch of interesting experiments, and methods of carrying those out.

Today's was for an Audiology dissertation, the experiment was designed to answer the question 'Is auditory memory enhanced by musical training?'. I'd imagine that the answer is yes, and according to the current set of results, it is.

First off I got a hearing test (not entirely sure of the reason I needed one) which disproved my inkling that I might have a couple of problems due to all the music I play and gigs I attend.

Secondly, I was asked to listen to a sequence of tones (ranging from between 4 and ~13 tones at a time), and then to listen to a second series and state whether the two sequences were identical or different. This went on for a fair while.

Thirdly, as a control test, I was asked to listen to a sequence of numbers being read out by a computerised voice, and then, as above, to compare the sequence to a second one.

Needless to say, I got the top 'score' for my responses in both examples out of all the current set of test subjects, and was only slightly better at recalling the tones than I was the numbers. Must come from playing jazz ;)

Bye bye =(

Lu's been here for the weekend, which was ace - haven't seen her in ages. Might go down to Bath in two weeks time, but if not then Easter's coming up - and I just found out that it's three weeks off (I'd assumed it would only be one, I'm getting too used to the real world).

We stayed in Friday night, I cooked one of my grandmother's recipes for her, we watched a film, just a fun night in really :) Employee Of The Month, by the way, isn't the best of films - I couldn't quite work out whether the overall concept was meant to be the joke, or whether they'd tried to base their jokes on a real concept. Either way it failed :P

Saturday we lazed around in bed for half the morning, had some breakfast and went off to town. Shopped for a few hours, before buying a single gift for one of her housemates - got to love girls. Also bought a bunch of new books for her too, half of which I've stolen. Got her;

Martin Amis - Yellow Dog
Raymond E. Feist - A Darkness at Sethanon
Raymond E. Feist - Silverthorn (I'm sure that's a weapon in Oblivion)
Martin Amis - The Information
Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow
Jean-Claude Carriere - Please, Mr. Einstein

Afterwards we went to Wagamama - a Japanese restaurant in the heart of Birmingham that was absolutely amazing. I had chicken ramen - and the size of the portion was impressive enough on its own. The soup was brilliant, the noodles gorgeous and of course, the chicken and the extras were wonderfully done. Came home and made some chocolate muffins then (which were a bit oddly shaped, given that we had no muffin tin), then made some strawberry smoothies and went up to play Broken Sword II. Danced to the Supremes before going to bed, because they're Kickass.

Today I cooked again, because I'm ace, and then we just spent the day together :) Gonna miss her now.

Xx

Dynamite Surfing

Ch-ch-check it out.

Thanks to Gareth for the link.

I've done 85 out of the 132 stupid things on that Facebook circular

And no, I have no idea why there's some levels skipped, or why they're in such a random order. Here goes:

Level 1
() Smoked A Cigarette
() Smoked A Cigar
(x) Kissed A Member Of The Same Sex
(x) Drank Alcohol

SO FAR: 2

Level 2
(x) Are / Been In Love
(x) Been Dumped
() Shoplifted
(x) Been Fired
() Been In A Fist Fight

SO FAR: 5

Level 4
(x) Had A Crush On An Older Person
(x) Skipped School
(x) Slept With A Co-worker
() Seen Someone / Something Die

SO FAR: 8

Level 5
(x) Had / Have A Crush On One Of Your Face book Friends
( ) Been To Paris
(x) Been To Spain
(x) Been On A Plane
(x) Thrown Up From Drinking

SO FAR: 12

Level 6
(x) Eaten Sushi
() Been Snowboarding
() Met Someone BECAUSE Of Facebook
(x) Been in a Mosh Pit

SO FAR: 14

Level 7
() Been In An Abusive Relationship
(x) Taken Pain Killers (because i was in pain!)
(x) Love/loved Someone Who You Cant Have
(x) Laid On Your Back And Watched Cloud Shapes Go By
(x) Made A Snow Angel

SO FAR: 18

Level 8
(x) Had A Tea Party
(x) Flown A Kite
(x) Built A Sand Castle
() Gone mudding (What in hell is mudding?)
(x) Played Dress Up

SO FAR: 22

Level 9
(x) Jumped Into A Pile Of Leaves
(x) Gone Sledging
(x) Cheated While Playing A Game
(x) Been Lonely
(x) Fallen Asleep At Work / School

SO FAR: 27

Level 10
(x) Watched The Sun Set
() Felt An Earthquake
() Killed A Snake

SO FAR: 28

Level 11
(x) Been Tickled
() Been Robbed / Vandalized
() Been cheated on
(x) Been Misunderstood

SO FAR: 30

Level 12
(x) Won A Contest (Never lost one though ;) )
() Been Suspended From School
(x Had Detention
(x) Been In A Car / Motorcycle Accident

SO FAR: 33

Level 13
() Had / Have Braces
(x) Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night
(x) Danced in the moonlight

SO FAR: 35

Level 14
() Hated The Way You Look (As if, I'm gorgeous)
(x) Witnessed A Crime (Probably..)
(x) Pole Danced (Not professionally)
() Questioned Your Heart
(x) Been obsessed with post-it-notes

SO FAR: 38

Level 15
(x) Squished Barefoot Through The Mud
(x) Been Lost
() Been To The Opposite Side Of The World
(x) Swam In The Ocean
() Felt Like You Were Dying (I'm no emo)

SO FAR: 41

Level 16
(x) Cried Yourself To Sleep (Why did they have to put this question directly after I said that?)
(x) Played Cops And Robbers
(x) Recently Colored With Crayons / Colored Pencils / Markers
(x) Sang Karaoke
(x) Paid For A Meal With Only Coins (You mean there are meals for sale that cost more than £4.50?)

SO FAR: 46

Level 17
(x) Done Something You Told Yourself You Wouldn't
(x) Made Prank Phone Calls
(x) Laughed Until Some Kind Of Beverage Came Out Of Your Nose
(x) Kissed In The Rain

SO FAR: 50

Level 18
(x) Written A Letter To Santa Claus
(x) Watched The Sun Set/ sun rise With Someone You Care/Cared About
(x) Blown Bubbles
() Made A Bonfire On The Beach

SO FAR: 53

Level 19
() Crashed A Party
() Have Traveled More Than 5 Days With A Car Full Of People
(x) Gone Rollerskating / Blading
(x) Had A Wish Come True
() Been Humped By A Monkey

SO FAR: 55

Level 20
(x) Worn Pearls
() Jumped Off A Bridge
(x) Screamed "Penis" or "Vagina" (=/)
() Swam With Dolphins

SO FAR: 57

Level 22
(x) Got Your Tongue Stuck To A Pole/Freezer/ice Cube
() Kissed A Fish
(x) Worn The Opposite Sex's Clothes
(x) Sat On A Roof Top

SO FAR: 60

Level 23
(x) Screamed At The Top Of Your Lungs
(x) Done / Attempted A One-Handed Cartwheel (Attempted.)
() Talked On The Phone For More Than 6 Hours (Maybe in my entire lifetime..)
(x) Recently stayed Up for a while talking to someone you care about

SO FAR: 63

Level 24
() Picked And Ate An Apple Right Off The Tree
(x) Climbed A Tree
(x) Had/Been In A Tree House
() Been scared To Watch Scary Movies Alone

SO FAR: 65

Level 25
() Believed In Ghosts
( ) Have had More Then 30 Pairs Of Shoes
(x) Gone Streaking (Not that I recall)
() Visited Jail

SO FAR: 66

Level 26
() Played Chicken
() Been Pushed into a pool with all your clothes on
(x) Been Told You're Hot By A Complete Stranger (Daily occurrence)
() Broken A Bone
(x) Been Easily Amused

SO FAR: 68

Level 27
() Caught A Fish Then Ate It Later
(x) Made A Porn Video/got asked to make one
() Caught A Butterfly
(x) Laughed So Hard You Cried
() Cried So Hard You Laughed

SO FAR: 70

Level 28
(x) Mooned/Flashed Someone
(x) Had Someone Moon/Flash You
(x) Cheated On A Test
(x) Forgotten Someone's Name
() French Braided Someones Hair (Tried and failed)
(x) Gone Skinny Dipping
(x) Been Kicked Out Of Your House
() Tried to hurt yourself

SO FAR: 76

Level 29
(x) Rode A Roller Coaster
(x) Went Scuba-Diving/Snorkeling
() Had A Cavity
() Black-Mailed Someone
() Been Black Mailed

SO FAR: 78

Level 31
() Been Used
(x) Fell Going Up The Stairs
(x) Licked A Cat
(x) Bitten Someone
(x) Licked Someone

SO FAR: 82

Level 32
() Been shot at/or at gunpoint (I'm guessing paintball doesn't count)
(x) Had sex in the rain
() Flattened someone’s tires
(x) Rode your car/truck until the gas light came on
(x) Got five pounds or less worth of gas

Total: 85

Photos from MSP event!

Here you go :)

Darren's photos

Amin's photos

Fun on the underground


London Eye


In Namco Station


By Tower bridge again


Awwww


Grant's American love


...what?


On the tube

Got the job!

No, not Microsoft, that telemarketing one I had the interview for today. Looks like I got it pretty much on the strength of my CV, though they invited me in for a formality of an interview.

Work's 2 weeks, starting on the 5th of March, 5.30 - 8.30 every weekday (though I won't have a shift every day, I believe) at £6 an hour. We're calling up students who haven't yet decided on their firm/insurance choices, just to find out if they have any questions about Brum or Aston, and basically selling them the Uni.

Should be pretty fun regardless, and given that I just got a DS (whoop) I could do with the cash :)

Invisible Sandwich!

Playing to lose

I've got an interview coming up in half an hour for a telemarketing position I applied for out of sheer boredom. From what I can tell, it appears to be calling up random A2 students and telling them that they should come to Aston, because it's great.

The interview's in the Business School (no other clues, so I might not even make it...) which presumably means all the other people there will be Business types - I feel soiled already. It'll be nice to be up there though, on the sixth floor with pretty views (well, as pretty as you get in Brum) and plate glass, instead of down in the basement where all the CompSci goes on, next to the dodgy air-con systems.

Anyhow, I'll go to the interview, because I've got to kill time between now and 3pm, but I really hope I don't get the gig. Sod's law though...

Xx

Date Night!

Took Hebs out for a date tonight, which was pretty fun and novel. Tried to make a proper go of it, so I brought her flowers, cooked one of my grandmother's recipes for her and then we went to the Glee Club for the evening.

Josie Long was on there and she was absolutely great. Full of youthful enthusiasm and with a beautiful view on life, I could happily have watched her for the full hour even if she hadn't been coming out with some hilarious stuff by the bucket load. Also, she was supported by Isy Suttie - a great singer and a pretty good comic too!

Also, interesting fact of the day courtesy of Ms. Long - the word 'amateur' is derived from the Latin for love, and literally means 'one who is passionate about' - which I think is just wonderful. Highly recommended if you ever see her playing somewhere near you!

Lu's here this weekend, whoop! :)

Update

Remember this post?

Microsoft Student Partner Event - MS London

This weekend was the second Microsoft Student Partner event, and boy was it a lot of fun. Consider yourselves warned, this is likely to be a long one.

Social Event

This Sunday was the social part of the second event for us MSPs and we really were in for a treat for the entire night. After getting a bit lost at Euston station (I was looking for the underground, not realising it was in the same building as the train station) I got to Edgeware road pretty quickly and stepped out of the station facing London's Hilton Metropole hotel - very convenient.

The Hilton
The Hilton was, obviously a gorgeous hotel (especially compared to some of the hotels a short distance away) but I'd expected a bit more from such a top-name brand. They didn't even provide any toiletries for me to bring home and give away as birthday presents to girls I don't like very much. The minibar was a fairly impressive system though, it charged as soon as any item inside it was moved, using a fairly complicated looking array of sensors. I'll admit I was tempted to go for an Indiana Jones moment, but we all know how that one ended for Indie..

Anyhow, the hotel room was going to be the least fun of the night, so I was soon off downstairs to meet the rest of the MSPs. We hadn't arranged a definite meeting point, but it wasn't hard to find them, I just looked around for the nearest bar. There should be some great snaps of me and Fernando in evil villain/world domination chairs - I'll post them when they're uploaded.

Namco Station
At about 6pm we set off for Namco Station, which is in County hall, just next to tower bridge. MS had booked the lower half of the station for us, so we had a nice leather seating area, a bunch of arcade machines and a few bowling alleys for our pleasure. They'd also ordered food for 30 (I believe only 21 of us went), which was lovely - and drink for...well, it must have been for about a hundred or so, because we didn't use up the bar tab until 4 hours in. All the arcade machines were paid for too :)

Matt Duffin (the technical evangelist) took on all comers at DDR - I used to think I was quite good until I played him, although we both managed to fail the song when we put on some insane dance track and nearly broke our legs. The bumper cars were faster than usual and caused much merriment, possibly helped by the tipsy state we arrived at them in. Bowling was fun, I had one good game (129) before the alcohol kicked in, but it didn't get any less enjoyable. The highlight of the night in terms of arcade machines was probably playing House Of The Dead III with Matt, and trying to predict the 'storyline'.

The Hilton (again)
After meandering through London, taking many pictures, most of which involved at least one of the Microsoft signs we'd taken from Namco, we eventually got back to the hotel bar. I popped up to my room for 10 minutes to put my jacket away, and by the time I got back to the bar some of the other MSPs had found a couple of American girls to chat up. Well, to be more precise, they'd found one American girl, and her stepmother. Details are sketchy, but there's photos of some of the guys in the Americans' room, and I know the mother was getting on very well with Grant Downie. We'll have to wait for the pictures on that one I think.

Didn't manage to get any sleep on the Sunday night, because I'd somehow taken everyone seriously when they suggested a 6am swim in the hotel pool. Only Matt turned up though, but the others missed out in my opinion. There was a lovely pool (mirrored ceiling == win), a steam room and a real sauna, which gave us a real appetite for breakfast. Hilton breakfast was naturally awesome, I've seen butchers with less meat out on display.

Vista/Office launch event

Awake and refreshed (ahem), we set off was a great event, held at the MS London offices. These seemed pretty cool, everyone was nice and laid-back but it didn't have the vibrant energy of the TVP campus in Reading, though that could have been just because it's tiny in comparison.

Darren Strange started off by chatting to us about our Office 2007 presentation, and how we can answer some pretty difficult questions that might come up. Learnt some cool new things there - most impressive was the fact that the Office 12 Word extension (.docx) is saved as xml (and I thought the x was just for show) - so I plan on seeing what cool things I can do with that now. The xml's inside a zip, which might be a little annoying to code around, but I'll let you know.

Next up was Matt McSpirit who gave us a talk on Vista. As we're all running it, we didn't need too much coaching, but I found a few features in Ultimate that I've not had in Business edition - the DVD maker is unbelievable, you can make a pro looking 1080p DVD in literally seconds.

Finally we got a really good grounding in how to present WPF from Mark Johnston, although I imagine I'm going to have a less techie audience so I'll probably stray from there. I'm loving WPF, although I haven't dabbled with XAML yet, and along with Blend I can see it becoming a really great tool to designer/developer interaction. Learnt some sweet new stuff too, but that's covered under the Non-Disclosure Agreement I'm under. I'll let you know as soon as I can though.

Finally we got a great presentation skills lecture (far better than anything I've learnt at Uni, or elsewhere) from Eileen Brown - an Exchange Server techie with a ton of presenting experience. I was confident presenting before, but now I've got some more slick tricks up my sleeve.

After a bunch of discussions about the MSP scheme, and moving on next year, we got the goodies. My Vista Launch pack should arrive soon, which will be jam packed with great stuff, but here's the highlights of what I got on the day:

Vista Ultimate
Office 2007 Home and Student Edition
6 t-shirts (3 types)
Thinking putty

and of course, a bunch more silly little things beside.

I then had to wait an extra hour once I got to the station because my ticket wasn't valid during peak hours, during which I discovered that I've possibly worked with the Birmingham MSP (Paul Kiddie, who, I forgot to mention, gave us a presentation on his Imagine Cup entry, which looks like it may take off commercially, given luck and more hard work) back at McDonald's in Cardiff, many years ago. Needless to say, once I got home, I was straight in bed.

As soon as people start uploading the pictures, I'll get them up for you! :)

Yee-ha

London tomorrow!

Well today was pretty lovely all around. Got up late and had Frisbee as usual, although we had to wait around for half an hour watching a fairly decent basketball game that had overrun into our time.

Had a nice evening with Gen after that, we made some Welsh cakes (although she grilled half of them, 'Welsh cookies' anyone?) which turned out alright, watched House Of Flying Daggers (great, by the way) and I gave her a massage for an hour or so (also great, of course).

London's tomorrow though, for the MSP event - staying overnight in the Hilton and off to Namco station on the Sunday, both of which should be awesome. Going to record a 2 hour prog jam before that too, I'll upload that somewhere if anyone's going to be taking copious amounts of drugs and needs a soundtrack anytime soon. The real fun's going to be on Monday though when we get talked through all the Cool Stuff in Vista - I love MS presentations, they're always so professional and interesting.

Was hoping to see Blue Man Group in the evening with Lucie too, but that's just not practical - we'll do it some other time though :)

HP TouchSmart

Have you ever wanted a touchscreen, high-end PC running Windows on your Fridge?

No?

Me neither.

The HP TouchSmart is a radical invention that is designed to replace post-it notes on the fridge. Personally I'd have opted for something along the lines of a touch-screen etch-a-sketch - maybe even with a stylus and a 'clear all' button for the top of the range market. But seriously, this SmartCenter rubbish built on top of Media Centre built on top of Vista? And it's still slower than my idea would be.

Although it uses sticky notes as a visual metaphor, SmartCenter misses the point. Notes stuck to the fridge work because they are in your face. Here you have to open the calendar program and tell it who you are before you see your messages.

No thanks.

Mitchell and Webb - Mac vs PC

So, we've got the Mac vs PC ads from America at last, and they're starring Mitchell and Webb. I love those two guys in Peep Show, and especially in That Mitchell And Webb Look, but they're pretty crap in this last lot of adverts.

The ads themselves are quite lame too, just a bunch of untrue cliches that aren't at all backed up. I'll be sticking with my PC thanks guys.

Here's the ads though, if you don't watch TV.

One step closer!

Woohoo, just found out that I passed the the video interview stage for my Microsoft placement - so I'm off to an assessment centre soon enough (end of feb/start of march).

That's going to be held at the Thames Valley campus, so I imagine it'll be fairly casual - I didn't see one person in a suit when I went to visit. Naturally, I'm rather happy about this.

Also, I haven't touched a single button on my keyboard or moved my mouse since I turned on my computer this afternoon. I checked and replied to my emails, written and posted this and chatted on IRC all via the speech recognition built into Vista with a crappy desktop mic. Leet or what?

Punk ain't dead

Decided to skip the LMS tonight - though the room was surprisingly full, they made £110 tonight by only charging £1 or £2 per head, or sometimes nothing. Instead, I spontaneously decided to go and see the Ruff And Ready tour at the Academy. The King Blues were playing, and I loved them when I saw them supporting Capdown. Also on the tour were Mouthwash (who I was too late to see), Failsafe and headlining were Sonic Boom Six.

Failsafe were pretty good, and seemed to almost be getting into what I consider the real spirit of punk by the end of their set - even though it was a bit heavy and distorted for my usual tastes. I should point out that when I think of punk, I don't think of spiky haircuts, swearing or distorted guitars - it's not a look or a style of music, it's a philosophy and a passion.

That philosophy, that passion, that sheer indefeasible spirit was what I saw in the last two bands tonight. Even though the styles of music were so wildly different, the message and the feeling behind it was the same.

The King Blues had bongos, a ukulele and a couple of acoustic guitars, along with the usual rhythm section and the odd few interesting instruments thrown in every now and then. They combined rap with folk with doo-wop, but it's the spoken word interludes and the preaching to the crowd that really wowed me. You could really feel the passion and fire in every word, as the frontman spoke out against all forms of discrimination and right-wing facism. This wasn't mindless anarchism, this was intelligent and heartfelt, with well thought out points, inspiring not violence or aggression, but thought and inner-searching.

Sonic Boom Six kept the pure punk ambience of the night alive but in a wildly different way. Although King Blues, not Sonic Boom Six were the band from London, I really got the vibe of the London garage scene from these guys. The sort of freestyle rap and hip-hop I'd normally associate with the streets of inner London was mixed in with some heavyish 'punk rock' (as the musical genre is annoyingly called) and some good old fashioned ska. Extremely danceable stuff, a wildly eclectic mix of styles thrown together and some really high quality hip-hop thrown in there (none of the modern 'pimp n playa' stuff, just quality beats and some superb raps and improvs thrown in) to really round it off.

Punk, in its truest and purest form isn't dead at all, the music, the culture and the look may have changed or died, but the spirit is still there, still waiting, go check it out sometime. A caveat however - you're not likely to find it by browsing the 'punk' section of your local music store or torrent site, you'll find it out on the streets, in a small upstairs gig, or on some pirate digital radio - where it belongs.

Job Satisfaction?

I did a mystery shopping job on the weekend for TNS-Global at a local pub (which scored pretty well, even though the food wasn't too great). Went to submit my questionnaire and payclaim form when I was done with that, and encountered a problem. The questionnaire was fine, but the submit button wouldn't work on Firefox, Opera or Konqueror.

I knew I could have just submitted on IE and it would almost certainly have worked, and it's not even like IE7 isn't usable or safe any more, but it still really annoys me when IT 'professionals' can't be bothered coding to standards and ensuring their sites work on the majority of popular browsers.

So, I got in touch with the regional controller, to ask for the claim to be submitted manually, and also to suggest how they could improve the site to make it usable by all. The replies were...less than satisfactory - she pretty much just told me "If you don't have Internet Explorer, tough". Here's the last two emails we exchanged:




I was possibly a bit sarcastic, but I really can't stand it when people are unprofessional. I won't reply to that last one though - there's calling people out on doing a shoddy job, and then there's just plain hurtful. I'll pass on crossing that particular line.

Also, the general theme of professionalism, I got a phone call from Stepstone Obvious about the 'Obviously Confused' post I made a few days ago. I get the impression they were more concerned about getting feedback for their own improvement, but on the off-chance that anyone took that post as a negative criticism of them, I'd like to point out that they rectified the mistake within 10 minutes and have been brilliant and professional throughout the MS and Rare recruitment processes. For that matter, I was also very impressed with AlexFeinnman - the recruitment agency for Fujitsu, to the point that I sent an email to the superior of the woman who organised everything commending her performance. And I'm not just saying this 'cause they might still be reading ;) I'm done with them now, just remains to see if Microsoft themselves think I'm good enough. Certainly hope so.

1-800-SUICIDE

Yeah, that really is a phone number.

Anyhow, I was sitting around bored on the internet when Clush linked me to a list of depressing MSN names. These were pretty amusing, and I longed to put one as my MSN subline, but my contact list contains retards who'd take it seriously.

As such, I decided to share some of them with other people. So, I googled 'teen forums' and signed up to the first two I found. I'd intended my username to be LonelyBoy17 on both, but a typo on the first, and the shocking fact that LonelyBoy17 was already taken on the second meant that I'm LoneyBoy17 (adds to the realism doesn't it?) and LonelyBoy16.

Given that I was signing up to post depressing thoughts, I found the following bit of the sign up process pretty amusing:



I amalgamated a bunch of the depressing names into a stereotypical emo poetry format (and I swear, I've changed not one word from the originals, nor added or removed a thing) and posted them in two separate threads. I quite liked the intelligent advertising shown after one of my posts:



Anyhow, the replies are looking pretty hilarious, so you might want to check the threads for updates, they're to be found here and here.

Sure, I'm going to hell. But I'm going to get there in style:

I walk through fire, I walk through waves,
Darkness is overwhelming with hate and pain.
I live a life of misery and hate,
I dream of being loved and safe.

Living is a nightmare, but suicide's reality,
Tears, scars and death... thats all life is to me.
Kill me now, you know you want to,
It's not like I want to live anyway.

Thorns of time against the rose of the world, killing us slowly as my petals fall.

There are no tears, No feeling of guilt,
Nowhere to channel the anger, Nowhere to leave the pain.
Early morning moments, A glimpse of joy,
But it's soon over and I return to dust.

You can't kill me.. I'm already dead,

The closer we are to the soul, the further we are from perfection.
Why settle for honesty when you can breathe a perfect lie?
This is real, I'm afraid;
This time there is no hiding.

Lost until the eternal sleep comes.

Top Gear == Suicide

Oh. My. God. Just watched the latest episode of Top Gear and I actually am surprised they got out alive this time. Sure Hammond had his crash, but most of the car stunts they do are pretty well organised and supervised and you never really expect anything to go wrong.

However, this show they went to America on a road trip, and bought some cars. They drove them from Miami to New Orleans, and there were many hilarious moments, but my heart was in my mouth as they crossed Alabama. For some insane reason they decided to decorate eachothers' cars with slogans most likely to get one another 'killed or arrested'. And they weren't joking.

'Nascar Sucks' 'Hillary For President' 'Man Love Rules OK' 'I'm Bi'

They really drove through Alabama with that on their cars. As if that wasn't enough to get them killed, they even stopped for petrol. At this point, May's Cadillac's battery ran down. Then the station owner came over for a quiet word, before calling 'the boys' - which turned out to be a pickup full of rednecks.

Can't believe they didn't get shot.

My Head Hurts :(

Started drinking at 4pm yesterday. Finished drinking at 4am this morning. Net gain - one headache. Net loss - a lot of whiskey and 12 hours. Can't really argue with that one.

Frisbee today was only 4 on 4, so we didn't get to sub off at all - very knackering, especially given the extra space on the court. The hangover didn't help either. On the plus side, the house headache meant that our jam today was nice and chilled, so we've got a new dubby number which is cool. I also have something nice and oriental that I can't do a damn thing with..

Anyhow, enough rambling, back to Desperate Housewives. Trying to get myself hooked on it - might keep me away from Oblivion, House and Guitar Hero for a bit..

Obviously confused

So, I've apparently gotten through the next mini-stage of my Microsoft application for a placement, the guys at the recruitment agency (Stepstone Obvious) have decided to pass my video interview on to Microsoft for consideration. MS will now get back to me within 10 days to let me know if I got through or not!

Just got an email from Obvious though, which was rather confusing. It was sent at 4.30pm today (I'm writing this at 4.20pm) and asks me to send them an up-to-date copy of my CV by the 15th of January at the latest...nice.

Woo karaoke!

Damnit. They didn't have Free Bird in the book, but Ed played it inbetween songs anyway. Although he only played the crappy radio edit, which made me cry a little inside. I somehow managed to avoid getting drunk (probably something to do with the lack of yards of ale being given out in return for nakedness this week), so actually got to experience karaoke sober for once. I recommend drinking.

Additionally, stop asking where I was till 8.45 this morning. I won't tell you.

Xx

Snnnnooooooooowwwww (Part deux)

Gotta love Clush...

Snnnnooooooooowwwww

Whoop whoop. Been snowing constantly here since the early hours, so when I set off for Uni I was slipping and sliding everywhere. Fortunately PriceWaterHouseCoopers were there to give out hot chocolate. They also gave me a leaflet about graduate opportunities too, but after reading all 8 pages I still have no idea what they do.

Once I got home, obviously we had to build a snowman. Once we'd built a nice small snowman though, some form of hypothermia-induced madness set in. Instead of putting some features on it and calling it done, we decided to turn the snowman we'd built into a single leg. After adding another leg we realised that the snowman would be significantly bigger than us, but soldiered on.

A lot of binfuls of snow shoveled from the road out front later, along with a roof-full and garden-full of snow, we had a body, but before we managed to get much in the way of arms or a head going, we ran into some fatal flaws. Like the thing was falling over. Managed to get a few snaps before it did eventually collapse, but none from the front, so the sausage roll eyes, dart nose and carrot mouth will never be seen again :(

Here's some pics:








You'll note that a traffic cone I brought home one drunken night was used inside one of the legs ;)

Speed kills

But apparently being involved in stopping speeding is also becoming a bit on the dangerous side too. Another letter bomb exploded this morning, this one was in the offices of the DVLA - previous targets have included the companies that manufacture gatsos, and even apparently an accountancy firm that deals with 'Speed Check Services', though I'm a bit more doubtful that one is linked to the anti-cameras campaign.

The story on BBC news

Seriously though, if you're going to send a letter bomb to someone, don't send it to some poor sod working in an office, send it to someone who actually sets policy or lobbies for more cameras. Or France. Send letter bombs to France. Lots of them.

So very, very busy...

Now that I'm in my second year, obviously I don't have a lot of free time. From about 11am it's all go, getting to Uni, sitting in Uni, watching Podge play DS, resisting the urge to go to a lab and buy a DS on eBay...it just doesn't stop until lunchtime at 1pm. And then again at 2ish, I've generally got at least another hour of lectures, generally followed by some other commitment.

Naturally, by the time I get home at 3.30pm I'm knackered - and the exertions don't stop there - I've got a full toolbar full of bookmarks I have to visit, and quite often post on. With a full hour of Uni work to do per night on top of this, I need to manage this free time wisely. That's why I've taken to watching House (which is Awesome) on one monitor and playing Oblivion (also Awesome) with subtitles on the other - dualscreening is so sweet, and I love how my graphics card can run both of those and vista's fanciness underneath it without breaking sweat.

If, by this time of night I'm not somehow drunk, I start looking around for other things to do - because more than 12 hours a day in front of a computer screen is bad for you, or something. Anything less is fine though. So, gonna go read a book, maybe call Lu...

Life's so hard.

Karaoke last night!

Was awesome! First time I've been in ages and it was packed. Bunch of people were there to celebrate Splash's birthday, along with Aston Snow, and some other regulars too. No massive highlights from a singing point of view, though the competitions to win drinks were above par.

I didn't manage to win anything for singing the Welsh national anthem solo in the 6 nations competition (I think I was disqualified for not making any sense actually...), but I got some Carling for trading all my clothes with Imogen, I'll let you decide if that's a good deal or not.

Other highlights included lots of dancing, getting carried by Dudley like a small child and finding that the lipstick mark I'd left on the wall in October is still there, go Einies!

My new favourite website

So, we're looking at getting a new shower for the house. And, being a bunch of boys, we managed to skip through the realistic possibilities in a matter of mere minutes and get onto the super-leet stuff. I think we've just about decided on buying the Hansgrohe Aquafun 140 Deluxe (third one down).

However, while browsing the internet, we found Boundary Bathrooms, a truly awesome company, with a great website, here's some of my favourite pages:

The Anthropos
Placing man at the centre of the Universe, its original personality is further highlighted by the versatility of installation. Anthropos does away with the idea of a simple tool designed for wellbeing to enter into the field of design, of compositional freedom based on the search for a new balance between shapes and materials to satisfy even the most demanding of consumers. And on, and on. Click the link, you won't regret it.

Sex Sells.
And I bet that guy in the middle of the Nordic Colorado Trio wasn't even paid to pose for that photo.

SunShower
Not the best product in the world maybe, but a truly legendary page, it's possible the only usage on the entire internet of the phrase "Showering is a daily occupation which occurs naked" - though I'll login to Wikipedia in a minute and see if I can't change that...

Sanisteam GL600 Steam Shower/Bath Combination
The bottom one there (pictured below), it even answers your phone for you.

Coming soon to DVD...

Me! Went to a 'mock interview' for the placements office at the Uni today, partly to get some tips on my interview techniques, and partly to help share them with others. The mock interview was recorded (surprisingly professionally), as were some general questions afterwards too, and it'll be amalgamated with some other stuff to produce a DVD on finding a placement.

I'll let you know when that comes out :)

Feedback from Fujitsu

So, Fujitsu called me today to give me some feedback on the assessment centre I attended, which I thought was very nice of them. I'd come away from the day feeling I'd done really well, so I was really rather curious as to why I hadn't gotten through to the next stage, but the call didn't really sate my curiosity.

First they told me that my presentation was very nice, and that I was really confident and natural giving it. As I knew. Next they told me that the group work went ok, but that I should have been a bit more forceful in getting the group to follow my (good) idea. Fair enough, a couple of marks lost there, but I should still be on even footing at the least with the rest of my group.

And then came what I suspect may have been the reason I didn't get invited to proceed to the next stage. "In future I'd suggest that you wear formal business attire.." etc - I turned up in some nice trousers and a shirt, everyone else had suits on. But then, this is partly my way of testing a company - if they're prepared to lose a prospective employee based on dress rather than skills, I doubt I'd want to work there anyway ;)

Petition against road tracking/taxing

If you're ever planning on driving a car, this one may interest you;

The government's proposing the introduction of road pricing, which will mean you have to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it.

The tracking device will cost about £200 on top of the cost-per-mile bill. A recent study by the BBC suggested that the lowest monthly bill could still be as much as £28 (for a rural florist), while a delivery driver might be billed as much as £194. A full time Mum who used her car to take the kids to school might pay £86 in one month.

On top of this massive increase in what is effectively a tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can no longer rely on nobody noticing and you should expect an additional fine with your monthly bill. Authorities may also know where parking restrictions etc are located, and whether or not you're violating them.

Sign the petition

Not sure quite how seriously petitions here are taken, but it's in the .gov.uk domain, so it's at least hosted by the government, so should be taken a bit less lightly than the average online petition.

New webcam

And it's a beauty. Of unknown brand, and from eBay (sent as a gift from China in return for some money...how gullible must customs be?), I just picked it up today. Very high res pictures, a bunch of fun effects, zoom, face tracking, and when I can work out how, it'll even be able to see in the dark.

Here's some of the fun effects for you - remember, this isn't a photoshop job, they're generated in real time at 60hz (when my cpu isn't being eaten up by something else).

Click to see them better, my fave's the charcoal drawing.

Xx

No Uni for me today

I'm used to a fair bit of traffic around Birmingham, but today was a bit exceptional. I saw a bus at the top of my road, just as I left the house, and after my three minute or so walk to the bus stop, and a half hour of waiting, that bus still hadn't made it to my stop. There's a 7 lane highway, the Expressway that takes me from home to Uni (and indeed, takes everyone this side of Birmingham anywhere near the centre), which was completely closed off all morning. Apparently my first lecture this morning contained a full 20 people, ouch.

Here's why: