The Contemporary Annals of a Convergent Trio on Divergent Paths

Are we still reading this?

2007-11-13T02:14:00.000Z

Figured I'd get some thoughts down, maybe either of you will read it, maybe you won't... It's late, so this is all likely to be junk of course. Feeling a bit down recently, I think it stems from two things; firstly, the fact that I'm a bit lonely, and secondly, my lack of ambition. Fixing either of those would fix this mood I think, but obviously that's easier said than done. I concentrated so hard on becoming a professional programmer, now that its happened, I'm kind of stuck on where to go next.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job, I have fun doing it, but I feel like I might've set my goals too low. I know I'm capable of more than I'm doing at the moment, but I'm a bit stuck on direction. Obviously nothing happens overnight, I'd be the first person to say that... I'm not at all used to not having a very clear direction though. At the moment, it's just earn money to buy a house - but then what? I feel like I should have aspirations, but I seem to have settled into a routine, and I'm not at all satisfied with it. I should probably take some time off, have a holiday, relax, think about things a bit.

The loneliness part is an odd thing, it makes me ponder on how fickle emotions are. You can realise that they're chemicals, you know that there are certain things you can do to elevate your mood, but where do you draw the line between artificial elevation and 'productive' elevation? I think at the end of the day, I'm missing companionship... Breaking up with Lyss hit me harder than I realised, and the thing with Heather really didn't help that...

The 'date' last Saturday I think went quite well, but I'm just fretting that it went terribly and that yet another person thinks lowly of me. I hope it didn't, but I just can't bring myself to think positively. Why do I care so much what other people think? I certainly didn't while I was with Lyss, but it seems my self-confidence has just plummeted since then.

This is going to be an embarrassing post in the morning... Anyway, In short, I need to get my life back on track... Where do I start?

Split the Atom

2006-07-04T16:36:00.000+01:00

http://www.begin2spin.com/ - Remember that yo-yo trick, 'split the atom'? Remember how no one could do it? Well, I was in Camden on Sunday and happened to buy myself a Viper (you remember that really expensive yo-yo that everyone wanted? Well, pretty cheap now...). Anyway, long story short - I can do Split the Atom :) It's actually pretty easy once you can do brain twister, just requires a little extra spin (which the Viper really helps with, can't quite do it with my other yo-yo yet (the Lizard), but almost, now I know what I'm doing...

Anyway, just thought I'd say - how cool is that? :D

Driving Lessons

2006-07-03T10:02:00.000+01:00

Can either of you guys recommend any driving instructors? Looking to start lessons soon, got my licence :)

This WGA debacle

2006-06-30T02:06:00.000+01:00

It's awkward to communicate through comments. This warrants a new post anyway, so, to recap from comments below:

James said...

Windows have recently released a "security update" which verifies whether you have a legit copy of Windows or not. Since this is a secondhand laptop, I have no idea, even though Windows is telling me it's pirated. Until it's resolved, I won't receive security updates. Gay.
22/6/06 2:39 PM

Markrian said...

I see... Being a laptop I'm sure it did at one point have a legit copy of Windows, but after a reinstall and a lost license key, probably not anymore. Sucks to be locked into Windows! There might be work-arounds - in fact I'm sure someone's come up with something already, it's just a matter of finding it.

Or, you could buy a copy of Windows. (How much does that go for nowadays? A quick search on Amazon shows that full versions of Windows aren't easy to find! Ah, found it. £169.99 from Amazon for XP Home Full edition with SP2 built in.)

Another option is to switch to Linux. There're no guarantees everything will work perfectly with it, though the latest releases have progressed enormously. IBM laptops often work flawlessly. What'll it be? I'm happy to help you out whatever your decision.
23/6/06 4:07 PM

Markrian said...

I was curious and checked out the price of Mac OS X on Amazon. That's £79.99, less than half the price of XP. It's a shame it doesn't run on non-Apple hardware (yet).

I just noticed that Windows XP with SP2 is available for £63.99 from Amazon, but the difference (or catch?) is that it's the OEM version. I can't remember if that really matters, and what differences there are, if any, between OEM and retail software. OEM software is aimed at businesses which build and sell PCs. Retail is for putting in Dixons. So the average person pays out £105 more than a business for a copy of Windows XP.

After checking again, Windows XP Retail has actually gone up in price! See retail and OEM on Amazon.

Honestly, why?

Dolphin Sex

2006-06-22T13:44:00.000+01:00

Disconcerting...

Chuck Norris Facts

2006-06-22T01:28:00.000+01:00

I've also commented on the last post, but I found this on random wanderings. Perfect for man points :)
Few favourites so far:

Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris.

Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.

If at first you don't succeed, you're not Chuck Norris.

If Chuck Norris were a calendar, every month would be named Chucktober, and every day he'd kick your ass.

Gosh

2006-06-20T22:57:00.000+01:00

Well, it sounds as if you are both doing very well for yourselves indeed. No such grandeur on my part, I'm afraid: no balls, no foreign trips in the summer. Doing The Winter's Tale this week, and then starting rehearsals for the Mitre Players summer show on Sunday. Will be visiting Edinburgh for a few days too, but not in a performance capacity. Just watched Johns fireworks, which were excellent, much better than Trinity's. Work wise, will hopefully be doing clerical stuff again at BSW Heating, my mum's old company; there's not a lot of internship in the acting trade. Will also get cracking on my degree reading, for a change, hopefully. As for "the Christian thing", yes, am trying to keep it up, but I want to do it with Camilla really, so probably won't gain much momentum until next year, or indeed the summer. And yes, I did know there was a burlesque singer called Camille, but have never heard her stuff. Having heard accounts of her performances, during which she downs entire bottles of whisky, she sounds a fascinating character. Concerning my half-sister, she's fine, and her new word is "Byeeeee". Very cute. She's also fond of a large monkey puppet that Dave uses with her; her first words upon his entrance are "Monkeeee!" Milking that vowel.

Were you affected by the football much in Germany, Mark? Translating/editing his memoirs sounds lovely, did you get on well? Heritage, ancestors etc etc?

Chris, what's GUADEC? Are you home now? And yes, general cotching sounds delightful. Plus 4 manliness points for self-prophesying your victory, too. Hope you're eating all your spinach.

Any tips for this Genuine Windows malarkey? This is a secondhand laptop, so I have no idea about its genuinity or otherwise.

And then the wall spoke

2006-06-20T18:01:00.000+01:00

Went to Germany for a week to visit my grandad, or Opi, whom I hadn't seen in over a decade. Every day there had perfect weather, reaching as high as 34 degrees in the shade. We went swimming in natural sulphur springs, ate lots of hazelnut ice cream which was yummy.

I read 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' on the outward journey. Good book, surprisingly readable and moving. I'm not sure whether this was intentional, but I disliked the kid whathisname. I couldn't deal him. At the same time I respected his like for mathematics and the scientific method. The problems described prompted me to explore them for myself.

Whilst in Germany I read 'Fear Itself'. The first few pages pissed me off a lot; bloody Americans... The story seemed to pick up a bit though. Some insightful stuff about the nature of fear and sexual pleasure in there. Not bad for an American.

Opi and I talked about politics and war, and of course his war stories. He wrote a report of his experiences in the Russian front in German a few years ago and we decided he should translate them into his best English which I would later edit.

Came back to Cambridge on Thursday, went to the Homerton Event on Friday, which for a tenner was excellent. Much better ROI (Return Of Investment, not Republic Of Ireland) than any ball could manage. Obviously Saturday I came to watch your show James - good stuff, I'm told. Sunday was Wyvern's Garden party, which was fun. There were women in bikinis wrestling in jelly! Apparently each girl received £100 for joining in. If I were a girl I so would have done that. Didn't sleep a wink Sunday night. Then came Jesus May Ball on Monday night, which was excellent, and I got four hours sleep this morning after Survivor's Photo. Oh, saw Will Brown the other day, and at the end of the ball - he's a galled tit, I mean tall git now. Claims he's extremely average here, which after having read some Maths Tripos papers I'm not surprised by.

Looks like I've got my placement in Astrophysics Part II next year, pleased about that. Should be a fascinating year.

How's the Christian thing going? And Camille? Did you know there's a French singer by the same name who I think is fantastic?

Fine, fine...

2006-06-20T17:49:00.000+01:00

Right, well - I've finished work very early today (been an extremely productive day and I worked 11 hours yesterday, so finished a little early), so I'll blog a bit. My life hasn't been particularly interesting of recent, it's been spent working, revising and hanging out with the people I'll be living with next year (it's going to rock :D). My calendar app is *rocking*, just a few things to sort out before it'll storm GUADEC :)

Looking forward to GUADEC quite a bit, having never been to Spain before, or a Gnome conference - I should be playing in a band there too, so all in all, looking forward to it... I'll make sure to take lots of pictures with my new phone - The Motorola V3i (I may have mentioned this before?) It has its faults, but on the whole it's quite nice and the camera is a huge step up from my last one. I opened a Flickr account the other day, check it out - Not much on it yet, but I've started taking more photos, I'll put more up soon.

I've not got much to report I'm afraid, other than work and hanging out eating pizza. Things have been extremely hectic, I've not really had the time to sit down and just think about life - I don't know whether this is good or bad, but I'm quite satisfied with the way things are at the moment. I especially enjoy my job, I really take pride in the work I've done for OpenedHand :)

So, what are we doing this summer guys? I need to take a holiday or I'm actually going to have a nervous break-down/heart-attack, so I'm thinking we should take some time to do some hardcore chilling - and by chilling, I mean eating rolls, playing frisbee, being beaten by me at Smash bros. and finally completing Paper Mario(?)
- When are you guys back? I'll be home from beginning of July.

Quite funny

2006-06-20T13:05:00.000+01:00

I have to keep trying...

Video here.

Please blog. Please.

More Hilarious Japes!

2006-06-08T10:41:00.000+01:00

Actually, I'm just putting stuff out there to test the brick wall I think I'm talking to...

Apparently Nintendo always spruce up their presentation when they send products to media sites, a la here.

Hello...

2006-06-07T10:23:00.000+01:00

Well, I've finished my exams now, which is nice, and the strike is off, so I'll get my results before I leave, hopefully...Watched Gladiator last night, very good, but seems old now...going to watch X-Men three today...rehearsing quite a bit for a few shows on the go. Any news? Chris, I know you've got this on RSS feed, go on, you could reply with all your news...

The eBay Avenger

2006-06-01T10:14:00.000+01:00

This is classic!

Hello

2006-05-19T08:57:00.000+01:00

Just to say Chris, good luck with the demo, and Mark, good luck with exams which must be creeping up now.

I did skim through your dissertation, Chris. The pictures were lovely.

How are you both? My exams start week today with Italian, and I'm rehearsing for a concert and a play, and then a musical in the summer with the Mitres. Going to Edinburgh for a few days in the summer too, and hoping/needing to squeeze in some paid work.

Hope you're not working too hard.

Happy Birthday Chris!

2006-04-03T09:53:00.000+01:00

Happy Birthday to Chris. Hurrah hurrah etc. Now we can all go drinking in America and hire a car. Hurrah hurrah.

BTW, Mark, if you're feeling bad that I didn't blog on your birthday, I only remembered because Chris called me last night. And you didn't blog on mine, so...ner.

Hurrah hurrah!

Hey guys

2006-03-01T02:49:00.000Z

Hey there, you're right, its been far too long since I wrote about my life and feelings and all that rubbish - As for linking to this blog from my blog... Don't know if it's really the right place for it yet, will have to see. Thanks for the compliments though :)

Things have been really weird for a while for me - Not weird bad, just weird. I've been very very *very* busy, so I've not had too much time to think about anything. I think I need to take it a bit easier if I can soon, but it's not really looking like I'll have a chance - perhaps the Easter holidays. But yes, quite stressed, but also quite fulfilled. I bought a playstation two (two = small version) last week, with We Love Katamari - an excellent game (about the only reason to warrant buying the console :p), played that a fair bit. Also, if you didn't already know, I spent the weekend in Brussels, courtesy of OpenedHand, for FOSDEM 2006. Was very cool, but I was also pretty ill - couldn't eat very much at all, big tonsils, etc. Hampered my networking capability a bit, which is a shame, a lot of relevant and interesting people I should've shook hands with. There's always next time anyway.

Emotionally, things are up and down. I'm very satisfied on the whole, but it annoys me that I'm only capable of so much in a given time - There are so many things I want to accomplish... Things with Lyss are really good, I really love her and being with her :) It's weird, I couldn't stop thinking about her in Brussels, the extra distance really brought her closer to my thoughts. I find I'm getting a lot more confident these days. At least, more confident in environments that suit me anyway. I feel less confident in environments I don't want to be in (bars, clubs, around people I don't know..), but I have the confidence to be in those situations less. I feel I'm getting slightly over-confident, but at least I feel that and I can put myself back in my place when I see myself being too much of an ass.

And guys, I miss you! I have other good friends now I suppose, but it's really not the same at all - Whenever I tell other people very personal things, I always feel like I'm forcing myself, or I'm doing it on some superficial level and that it isn't the same as with you guys... We seriously need to get together at some point, perhaps have a bit of a smash bros. sesh, some rolls, a few rounds of 'stylishly throw the fridge magnet', y'know...

Anyway, off to bed now, totally shattered - Leave your comments/posts!

Where is everybody?

2006-02-19T19:32:00.000Z

A new post is definitely required. Two birthdays have passed without a flicker, which is disgraceful.

My general news is that this term I have done two plays, and have two left; work is getting very irritating, with dissertation and all, haven't handed an essay in on time this term.

Camilla is also fine, haven't seen her for some time, so missing her quite a bit.

Plans for Easter include revision and doing a dissertation. Going to the theatre will probably also feature.

So how are you all? Girlfriends/shag buddies ok? Work ok? Any plans? Any news? What's your view of how language operates in literature: communicative or generative of meaning for a reader, with a guiding hand by the author? Any thoughts on "Ulysses"?

Seen any good films/TV lately?

Good new blog, Chris, good design Mark. You need a link to this page on it though. Any formats lately? Bit of a laugh? Any hiliarious IT anecdotes that I can understand? Standpoints on Google in China? Whatever.

Money ok? Eating well?

Happy New Year etc

2006-01-18T08:50:00.000Z

Happy New Year etc. No one's posted for a while, so thought I'd post a little random site, mainly for Mark's interest. Hope you're both well.

Christmas and New Year

2005-11-27T18:47:00.000Z

I'm not that confident that this post will be seen, but if you both still check the blog every couple of days like me then...good.

Just wondering what you were doing for Christmas holidays. I finish on the 2nd, rehearsing for a couple of days, visiting my dad, then going to Spain 13th-17th, Christmas at home, New Year's a question mark, and back here on the 7th.

How are you both? Work ok? Families and friends ok?

Optical Illusions

2005-10-19T13:22:00.000+01:00

There've been no posts in a while, so here are some optical illusions that will blow your mind, James. (Chris has seen them already.)

cool_illusion

colourPerception

Wish you were...

2005-09-17T05:29:00.000+01:00

...here.

Nice...

2005-09-01T20:25:00.000+01:00

You probably saw this on Slashdot:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16417002%255E30417,00.html

Impressive...and slightly freaky. Like the T2000!

Why not?

2005-08-09T15:19:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd make a new post to keep this blog from dying. Some news: I've moved into my new house in Cambridge! It's mostly just me and James (Birrell), but other people come by every now and then for a day or so to move some stuff in.

Also, I've just gotten a 2Mbps connection installed here! Hence my online-ness.

Also! I have no job and need money.

Sweaty

2005-06-17T09:14:00.000+01:00

Brilliant.

EXAMS FINISHED!!

2005-06-15T13:03:00.000+01:00

MY EXAMS ARE FINISHED OH MY GOD FREAKOUT!

High fives all round!

Whispered Apologies

2005-06-10T01:17:00.000+01:00

You both know of www.qwantz.com, a web comic written by Ryan North. I think it's incredibly cleverly written. Recently I discovered another comic he's partially responsible for: Whispered Apologies.

They're all one-offs, all written and drawn by different combinations of people, though Ryan North writes most of them I think. The best ones only have humour as a sideline in the strip. Some of them are a little obscure and weird, but some I find are profoundly poetic. I urge you to go and read through the archives there (there are only a couple of handfuls (handsful?) of them so far).

An example of beautiful poetry.

Exams

2005-06-07T23:36:00.000+01:00

How are they going?

My UO Account...

2005-05-31T20:05:00.000+01:00

...is still registered with EA! Just checked on a whim. Can't believe I started playing August 1999...Our youth! It is gone! And for what? To impress the chavs at Cineworld with my DDR skillz! Foh! Woe!

Just in case you missed it on Slashdot...

2005-05-30T16:50:00.000+01:00

This is very funny.

PSP

2005-05-23T17:41:00.000+01:00

Last night I met a guy with a PSP. Wow. Have you guys seen a PSP in real life yet? It is absolutely astonishingly amazing.

The screen is ENORMOUS. Also, it's one of the best quality screens I've EVER seen, including anything that can be called a screen. SUCH crisp detail.

I can't remember what game he had on it (some kind of third person fighting game, like Prince of Persia?) but it ran totally smoothly, with lots of detail and excellent graphics.

That little machine is so incredible.

It'll retail in the UK for £179.99 apparently.

IBM

2005-05-17T16:51:00.000+01:00

I was accepted!

*chuffed*

My SEG group rocks

2005-05-12T03:34:00.000+01:00

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~cil103/seggui4.png

My group rocks, check out our work :) (still unfinished mind :/)

Also, I can't believe I complained about lack of time/too much work before... Because I am TOTALLY fucked now :| (Got a 10 minute presentation to prepare for my IBM assessment on Monday too...) Don't really have the time to collate my thoughts properly at the moment, I'm still reeling... And some odd smell seems to have followed me from work and I can't identify the source :/ Annoying...

Good night.

Funnyfox

2005-05-08T08:44:00.000+01:00

http://www.funnyfox.org/

New Family Guy Ep

2005-05-07T19:31:00.000+01:00

Having just watched it, I felt it would be a perfect blogging topic. My overall feeling was that it was slightly contrived, even for FG's standards - not quite enough cause and effect. BUT, the old gag quality was still there (I'm thinking particularly of Mel Gibson's safe, the sitting down joke, and Stewey in bed ("Now, did I remember to turn off the stove?"). Gipetto gag was good, but not really FG style, I felt. I'm sure they'll find their feet, and once they stop trying to put cameos in (although it was nice to see greased up deaf guy and popsicle man :)), I think it will be good again.

Paper

2005-05-06T19:27:00.000+01:00

One year ago today Camilla and I got together, and our relationship is better than ever. Hurrah!

Thieves need to die

2005-05-05T23:57:00.000+01:00

I know we've discussed this at length before, and I've gone from an extremist view-point to a slightly less extreme view-point to quite a forgiving view-point...

But I've just had my bicycle seat nicked, and all thieves need to die a slow and painful death.

Homerton IT Department

2005-05-03T14:13:00.000+01:00

As both of you know, the Homerton IT Department has a terrible track record. Everyday I see instances of sheer ineptitude, and am aware of a variety of more effective means to solve their problems.

Today was just like any other day. However, I finally decided to tell them about it. Below are copies of a few emails that tell the whole story.

MIME structure of this message, including any attachments:

1. (text/plain), 12 lines Download this text
2. [paperclip] winmail.dat (application/ms-tnef), 271 K
--------------------------------------------

Please see attached Adobe Acrobat .pdf document containing the I.T Department Newsletter.

Regards,

Homerton I.T. Department
--------------------------------------------
Homerton College I.T. Department
http://www.homerton.cam.ac.uk/itdept/

Ext. 7/8009

Notice that the claimed PDF file is not attached! Instead there's something called 'winmail.dat'. "What the fuck is winmail.dat?" most would ask. Let's see:

Hello,

I feel I should point out a problem regarding the email the IT dept. sent out earlier today. The problem revolves around the fact that most users do not use MS Outlook to view their mail in hermes; rather the webmail interface is used.

It was claimed that a PDF file was attached to the email, but all recipients not using Outlook to view the email only see an attached file called winmail.dat. This is a proprietary file format which contains formatting data, attachments etc., and is not viewable by anything other than Outlook.

Given that most (I'm sure upwards of 90%) recipients use the webmail interface to their hermes accounts, the newsletter that exists as a PDF within winmail.dat will remain hidden and unread by this significant proportion of people.

May I direct your attention to the following web page which describes the problem in more detail, and proposes remedies for the situation:

http://www.gpc.edu/~jbenson/resource/winmail.htm

Kind regards,
Mark Florian

Ridiculous, hmm? I wasn't quite done, either.

Hello,

After manually extracting and reading the newsletter from the winmail.dat file described in my previous email, I noticed a request whereby the desire for a piece of software to be present on the network should be forwarded to the IT dept..

Therefore I would like to request two pieces of software to be made available:
- MATTER, a learning and teaching package for Materials and Mineral Scientists, and
- Mozilla Firefox.

The former is an extremely useful package for Natural Scientists, and work is reguarly performed using the software. With the current situation, students must travel to the centre of Cambridge to access it.

The latter is a web browser that offers *significantly* increased security over Internet Explorer. In conjunction with this, I would consider including an "Installing Firefox" stage at the start of terms just as valuable as the anti-spyware and anit-virus stages in terms of system security.

Kind regards,
Mark Florian

It is so relieving to get frustration out in a useful form. I'm telling them how to do their jobs!

Oh, and James, you'll like this bit from the newsletter (emphasis mine; [lack of] punctuation, spelling, grammar and formatting theirs):

Twelve Stages for Student Room Connections - Why Every Term ?

The amount of stages to complete is likely to be significantly less in the New Term but the re-connection process needs to be repeated at the beginning of each new term to ensure Adware, spyware or Viruses picked up from Broadband or Dial-up connections at home are removed before re-connection. We have to enforce these stages to ensure Stability and a reliable service to those already connected. We know other colleges have alternative arrangements some of these have proved to be at the expense of their users PC's

Quote from a UK University I.T Dept allowing students to plug in directly to the internet :
"On our residences network this year we have had support problems far beyond those experienced previously. Within about 20 minutes of a student PC connecting to the network it is likely to be infected by a "Spyware Trojan" and other "Malware" which displays popup web pages for pornographic sites. We have found the problem very difficult to clear from affected PCs."

Love it.

Hardcore.

2005-05-02T10:59:00.000+01:00

I am working 11 hours today. That's 11, as in eleven, as in six more hours than I'd usually work. I'm planning to bring some work and games and such with me, hopefully it won't be 11 hours of serving people... But that's what I call hardcore, so I won't have any of you lot complaining about your work! I also have a coursework due last week to do, another coursework due next week (I think) and group project deadlines to work for - Also, another IBM assessment day in two weeks.

*That* is what I call hardcore.

Still, on a lighter note, I have a new phone! I've had two new phones in fact. The Fist of the North Star books STILL hadn't been dispatched and there was no sign of them being delivered anytime soon, so I cancelled those, sold my old phone and bought a new phone - The Philips 755. Possibly the most flawed phone in existence. The hardware is great, good camera, a touch-screen, nice-looking design... But they COMPLETELY ballsed-up the firmware. Here's a run-down of the things wrong with it:

Not a single menu-item is in a logical place (when you go into the main menu, the primary option is 'Settings'.)
There's a significant latency with input from the keypad.
The camera sensor is aligned horizontally and provides no size between 640x480 and 128x160 (has a nice zoom though).
A camera, yet no picture phonebook? wtf? (you can assign pictures to groups and groups to people, but there are only 30 groups...)
Pressing the 'shift' or 'symbols' key on the on-screen keyboard results in a significant delay.
You can't add words to the T9 dictionary (these last two making texting extremely frustrating).
Java apps run HORRIBLY slowly, despite the quite adequate hardware.
The Java VM handles menus extremely gayly, despite having the screen-space to handle them correctly.
The joystick toggle is a bit shitty.

I took that back as soon as I could (mind you, had to put up with it for 4 days, as they were out of stock for the phone I wanted...) and got a Sony Ericsson T630. And wow, this is the best phone I've had in ages :) *Perfect* menu layout, lovely organiser features, bluetooth, decent Java performance (although it is still a little slow in the more modern games), fantastic looking design (you really have to see it, pictures never do it justice), perfect synchronisation with Linux/evolution using multisync and bluetooth, a good selection of default games... It's just so damn good :) I am very happy with this phone indeed :) (and if you've seen the T610 btw, it's pretty much the same phone, but with a *much* better screen, slightly smaller and slightly faster)

It's a real shame about the Philips phone though, it could've been excellent... (although I'm glad it wasn't, as I can't imagine it getting more excelleny than the T630 :))

I fell 12,000 feet.

2005-04-30T23:17:00.000+01:00

The sky and horizon tumbled and blended in front of my eyes whilst we plummeted towards the Earth at 120mph.

Skydiving is AMAZING.

I can't express to you in person, much less in blog form, how exhilirating and astonishing it is. The land looks flat as if you can touch it; you hang there, as if you were still, watching in awe as the clouds rush towards you, engulf you, and drop you from their belly.

Jumping from the plane and reaching terminal velocity... I...

I will be doing it again.

Owned.

2005-04-25T03:15:00.000+01:00

Owned.

Clairvoyance

2005-04-22T21:08:00.000+01:00

The only one of my predictions that didn't come true was the one about my new catchphrase, which isn't really my new catchphrase. Well done me. Happy Birthday Chris.

It seems I can only work in daylight. Looks like 6 o'clock starts for me...

Competition?

2005-04-13T05:07:00.000+01:00

Check out my new me-only blog, bitches!

(if that link is still broken, it's at www.soton.ac.uk/~cil103/)

For the observant/bored

2005-04-03T13:22:00.000+01:00

Just thought I'd leave this post as a little surprise for either of you checking this. I'm at Camilla's at the moment and a little at a loose end, and I've started talking crap and telling crap jokes by just repeating things in a strange way, so this is relief for me too.

Got a choir rehearsal tonight from 6.30 in London, then all day tomorrow and most of the day Tuesday, when we're performing at Cadogan Hall. If you're reading this in time, then you're OBLIGED to come. It WILL be shit and cheesy, but if you come expecting that it might be a good laugh.

Going to see a show with some Mitre Player's type people on Wednesday night with Camilla, which will also probably not be great (hope none of the people in it Google me and find this :\). Not so much them, but the material is poo. It's a compilation of songs about middle-age. Mm.

I'm quite missing the Wesnoth action, truth be told, and I also want to do some work, which I sort of feel bad doing here since Camilla doesn't have any. And damn, this keyboard has a tiny backspace key, only one key-unit big. Grr.

So...anyone up for some study-buddying Thursday/Friday/weekend? Or some Wesnoth action? Or some Smash Brothers arse-rapage?

And Mark, how has your weekend gone? What happened with Del? Did you sit her down? Perhaps when you finally read this post in a couple of weeks, the situation will have changed drastically - what an exciting exercise in the nature of time, memory and making a timestamp with text! Oh!

You should both also read Hamlet.

Ok, some predictions for when you read this - I predict that a new Pope will have been installed (or unpackaged for you Linux buffs! hoh!), also that we will have played Smash Brothers, and that both of you will be fed up of my new catchphrase "Ohh, come come!". Also that we won't have done much work, and will be regretting it, but we will have had nice walks and good chats and whatnot. The general election will also have been called. And I will probably still be in the choir, despite not liking it at all, because I get a free three week holiday to America. Damn them perks, they convince me perfect. Fewer.

Coming home

2005-03-22T14:26:00.000Z

Wow, so I'll be coming home for a month tomorrow... I almost feel reluctant about it, university life is quite different and a lot more action-packed than life at home. It'll be good to see you guys again though, and my family of course. What're you all doing Thursday-Saturday? I'm off on Sunday of course, and seeing Lyss Monday/Tuesday I think.

My hard-drive died last friday, again. Maplin were extremely awesome about things though and provided me with an equivalent replacement (but a better brand!) with no questions or anything - I didn't even have the receipt, and they tracked the order and gave me an updated receipt! I'll certainly be buying more hardware from them if they can consistently provide this level of customer support, not to mention the convenience.

Anyway, because of this, I've reinstalled Linux and such - I lost surprisingly little - Annoyingly, some code I was working on, but nothing big and it was unlikely that I was going to finish it anyway... I'm using Ubuntu Linux now, as Mark has raved about before. I did try it out before after my last hard-drive crash, and I wasn't impressed. But things have changed. It is *extremely* awesome and I'll be recommending and installing it for Linux n00bs as much as I can :) (James?)

I'm now in the midst of reinstalling OpenEmbedded, so I can get my dev on again. Also re-downloading Scrubs series 4 that I lost :( (lost some movies too, but nothing I was going to watch anytime soon, and mostly Chris's and James's stuff) Series 4 of Scrubs is great btw, much like series 1-3 - Still has that great feel-good vibe about it, and the brilliant slapstick humour mixed with a pinch of tragedy that make it so unique, in my eyes.

Thinking of humour, have either of you seen Team America yet? I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but it's the funniest film ever. Period. Well, on initial viewing anyway... But yeah, you should both see it!

Anyway, I'm going to continue to setup OE and start a build going, then ride to uni where I forgot my D-lock on Friday... (whoops) Hopefully someone hasn't taken a hack-saw to it or anything.

See you guys in the week, here's hoping!

Puzzle Pirates!

2005-03-18T01:11:00.000Z

This game looks surprisingly good!

I know you'll laugh, but I reckon it looks kind of fun. A really nice community too. Go to the forums, Piratey Parlance, and the "Inspiring Subscription Story" (or something) sticky. Really sweet! Aaaah.

Camille...

2005-03-15T12:03:00.000Z

...was born yesterday, around two o'clock pm, and weighed at that time 6lbs and 9oz.

Interesting that, not knowing anything else about a new person, we assign their weight to them as a distinguishing attribute...hehe.

Mumblings of the fatigued

2005-03-15T03:38:00.000Z

Yoshi's Island was (and is) a great game. I mean, damn - The first mario game where they really try something new (Mario 2 isn't a Mario game!) and they hit the nail, RIGHT on the head - AGAIN. There is only one criticism I can level at it, and that's the pathetic level of difficulty of the bosses vs. the levels... Some of the levels are fiendish - In a good way, it makes you keep coming back, but they're really very challenging... The bosses on the other hand... Man, they're so piss-easy it's laughable! I've no idea what they were doing with those... (They are all cool though :))

Anyway, yes, playing a fair bit of that given that I've bought the game now - 'tis good. I also bought Mario Advance 4 (Mario 3! :D) last weekend, hasn't arrived yet - looking forward to that too :) Having now played Yoshi's Island some more, I'm really not sure which my favourite Mario game is... The top three are most definitely Mario 3, Yoshi's Island and Mario 64, without a doubt... I think Mario 3 might edge it, but I'll have to play it again...

I've been doing so much stuff recently it's almost silly... I've been so occupied - not to say that I haven't got lots of play-time, but man... So much OE work, coding for the group project, work work... I am VERY much looking forward to the easter holidays.... When I'll have to catch up on work I've missed :p

Oooh, thinking of easter, guess who's going to see the original Lockers AND the Electric Boogaloos? Oh yes, 'tis me. That is SO gonna rock, man...

We did an ECS games thing today - 5-8.30 (we meant to stop at 7 :p hehe) of AirBucaneers and UT2k4 :) That was a lot of fun, and I totally OWNED on one deathmatch game (Morpheus, I know the level well :)). As usual, I owned in AirBucaneers, but that really isn't worth mentioning and it's a team game anyway... (but I do totally own at it.)

I'm very tired... Will go to bed in a sec... Just thought I'd update and stuff - haven't really had the time to write a proper update, these are my pure unedited, hazy thoughts. I'm very tired.

What's with all the gayness btw Mark? Am I to be the bastion of manliness for this trio? (well, I was already, but I dunno, is my position to be concreted?) Yeah, what's up with that? Man - what?

(plz ignore grammar and spelling in this post! :D)

Ms. Homerton

2005-03-12T12:57:00.000Z

There was a Ms. Homerton competition at the bar last night. Suffice it to say that I was gorgeous. The only reason I didn't win was because I have STANDARDS.

There will be pictures.

Cravings

2005-03-10T21:55:00.000Z

It seems that I have redeveloped a taste for J pop. Listened to nearly all of the DDR Megamix the other night. Plus some EX2. It's really good...

Christianity

2005-03-08T03:25:00.000Z

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and in particular I'm thinking about "converting" slightly more officially to it. This has basically come about through meeting some very normal, non-scary non-brainwashy Christians who I've spoken to and really got on with.

The big thing for me is the whole not having sex before marriage thing, which I don't think would be fair on Camilla. Obviously I'd talk to her about that. The other thing is that it's a really big "life commitment" to make, and although it shouldn't change "me" completely, there'd probably be certain things that would change...church, for instance, and just a sort of general outlook on life.

In fact, I think I've pretty much got it anyway, in terms of ethics etc, but the biggest thing is being wholly aware of the central Christian beliefs, eg, salvation through Christ etc, and being genuinely ok with that. It's quite hard to make a profound inner shift like that, although I think I believe it.

Just wondering what you guys thought of it. Obviously I know that you probably don't share my belief (well...Mark definitely not, haven't spoken to you, Chris, about it for some time), but just what you thought generally. Not sure what I'm asking really.

Recent purchases and potential good news

2005-03-06T20:31:00.000Z

Well, just blogging to fill you guys in on what I've been up to recently... This mostly consists of some purchases, and some potentially good news - I'll leave the latter until last :)

Recent purchases

GBA SP - Limited Classic NES edition - Lyss paid for half of this as an early birthday present, and I must say - Nintendo really made a mistake with the first edition... I've rediscovered my love of portable gaming, now that I can actually see the games I'm playing :p This is the basis of my next few purchases.
Final Fantasy Tactics - Brilliant game - both me and Lyss have it, and I've played it a lot (and thanks to the GBA SP, I've not lost any time I could've been productive with). It reminds me a lot of Shining Force 3... There's a lot more depth to the battles, stats and the like, but a lot less depth to the story and adventure element. Very good though - not a Shining Force 3 (or even 2 I don't think) beater, but certainly worth playing.
GBA SP headphone adaptor - Nintendo are so damn cheap... Not only do I have to get another GBA to play my games properly (I've sold my old one though mind), but I have to buy a bloody adaptor to use headphones with it! Good thing it only cost £2.50..
Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island - Classic game, as I'm sure you both already know... Haven't received it yet, but looking forward to playing it at work :) I wasn't aware of this (and I did play Yoshi's Island quite a bit, so it's surprising to me), but did you know that Yoshi's Island is actually a bigger game than Mario World? It always struck me that Mario World was huge, but then I never played it much.... Interesting little fact there for you anyway.
Airform GBA SP case - Nice little stretchy case thingy that fits snugly around the SP and can fit two extra game cartridges... Cost me about £3.50, also hasn't arrived yet... Looks cool, not really got much to say about this...

Planned purchases

Sharp Zaurus serial cable - It's a little expensive (£25! rip-off...), but it's quite rare now, and I need it for development... I was a little reluctant to shell out the money at first, but once you hear my potentially good news, you'll see why I no longer mind (Although given that it is only potentially good news, I may be let down). I haven't bought this yet because it's not available - it becomes so on March 17th, hopefully.

If you're wondering where I'm getting all the money for this stuff, I've managed to wrangle myself some extra work (at my place of work, doing odd jobs), so it's all good.

Now, on to the less mundane, and potentially totally awesome news.

Summer work - I may be working on Matchbox/OpenEmbedded stuff as a summer job. PAID to work on what I work on pretty much every day. The reason this is potential and not solid is that it depends on how well the company is doing at the time, but the head of it is a guy who idles in #gpe and I've spoken to him lots and had dealings with him and such - I'm sure he knows I'm a pretty capable guy (or he wouldn't have said that there may be a job kinda thing... I'd hope!) and I love working on OpenEmbedded and GPE and such, so if I got that, that'd be totally awesome.

Totally Awesome.

Another Comic

2005-03-03T01:37:00.000Z

Having touted this to you, there's probably a psychological barrier to stop you finding it funny.

This term

2005-02-26T18:51:00.000Z

This term isn't going at all well for me. I quit rowing so that I could devote more time to work, and yet somehow I'm more behind than ever! I received the following email from one of my supervisors this morning:

Dear Mark

As far as I'm aware I haven't received any essay from you. I will write your supervision report next week and I would prefer not to have to state this on the form. If you still want to hand in an essay I will accept one up until tuesday morning.

Best wishes

Annette

Not good. There's no way I'll have time to do even one essay if I want to get in any work for my other three modules as well...

Brief Update

2005-02-26T00:24:00.000Z

Haven't been doing much lately, just recovering from the show and catching up work. Didn't get much sleep earlier in the week as a result.

I'm currently listening to a CD that Camilla made for me for my birthday, her singing over some jazz tracks - she's really very good.

Going to Eton tomorrow to do a concert with the choir. Bah. Will take a book, but probably won't get anything done.

Had a very lazy day today, got up at 11, went to the pub at 11.30 with English types, decided that we'd do Waiting for Godot next term, had a massive burger, then went to Starbucks at 2 for a Me and My Girl coffee morning, stayed there until 7.20, then had a four hour choir rehearsal. Just got back and Lynsey (the Christian on my landing) made me a bacon sandwich, which was nice.

I'm spending too much money and not doing enough work, but can't complain, having a great time.

Might post a couple of tracks - she's really good...

Oh, and here's a nice link
http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/02/25/1434245.shtml?tid=209&tid=141

Review of a FF music concert in Illinois - apparently a very cool showcase. Hope they bring it to UK...I miss FF7...aaah, those were the days....still, Easter soon, and then some lazy days of repetitive thumb action and hardcore injokes galore! Might get to visit your flat Chris my boy.

Think I'm going to make myself a ham and cheese samwich...no, really.

Some eye-candy

2005-02-25T05:54:00.000Z

Preview shots of OpenZaurus 3.5.3, just for you guys :)

A couple of those pictures will probably be in the next OE/OZ/Familiar newsletter, and they're available online to see if you go to scap, but y'know - semi-exclusive, just for you guys ;)

Exam results, OpenEmbedded

2005-02-24T14:17:00.000Z

Got my exam results today! I didn't do as well as I thought I did unfortunately, but all the same, I didn't do badly... Here's the break-down:

Computational Systems - 63
Database Systems - 60
Software Analysis and Design - 61
Operating Systems - 73
Compiler Engineering - 60
Scripting Techniques - 74
--------------------------------
Average - 65.2

Happy with scripting and OS at least, anyway - I expected more in computational systems and database systems, for sure... Especially databases, not sure what happened there... But either way, I should complain considering the work I put into it.

Thinking of work, I have put SO much work into OpenEmbedded in the past couple of weeks! Fortunately, it's paying off :) My PDA is now usable again, after so long - Minimo is looking good too, but unfortunately, it still crashes on pretty much every site that doesn't have a special style-sheet for PDAs (looks great on OSnews.com though!). But plug-'n-play is working awesomely - Pulling out and putting in my CF card NEVER leaves the CF slot unusable anymore, and I can hotplug Wifi too, and it'll detect it and connect, if a network's available, and a nice icon appears in the 'taskbar' with reception details and such... It's all very nice, I'll post up some screenshots in a bit :)

OpenZaurus 3.5.3 for collie + gpe is going to rock anyway... SO much works compared to 3.5.2 (and even 3.5.1, which was the last release I worked on) and I'm very pleased with my work :) (and the work of others of course, it's hardly just me working on it) - I can see 3.5.3 as the release that attracts more users away from Opie and to GPE... Not that I want Opie to fail or anything, but I would be working on that instead if I thought it were a better alternative. I think the next big thing I need to work on is a decent media-player for GPE... mplayer works perfectly, but that's command-line only... Anyway, yes, that's what I'm up to

Wassup with you guys?

Me and My Girl Review

2005-02-21T18:15:00.000Z

If you're interested.

Jump update

2005-02-20T12:29:00.000Z

Unfortunately we weren't able to jump. We all passed the training (which was knackering), but there was a blizzard. We can only jump, as beginners, in winds of no more than 12mph with good visibility.

Still, I had one hellova lot of fun with everyone. The last time I had so much fun was years ago, probably back in the days of London weekends.

I am still going to jump! We are planning on going at the end of term, weather permitting. If that doesn't work, we'll try sometime in Easter, and if that doesn't work, we'll try at the beginning of next term... But believe me, I will jump out of a plane, even if it kills me! (joke)

Everything's back to normal now, which is a shame. Feels like we were away for days, not just a short weekend.

36 hours

2005-02-18T21:33:00.000Z

This weekend's plan:

Saturday
- 0630: Taxi ride into town
- 0700: Begin coach journey
- 0800: Arrive at parachuting destination
- 0900: Begin training
- 1800: End training
- 2100: Say what may be my last words to friends and family

Sunday
- 0630: (Last?) Breakfast
- 0800: Leave for airstrip
- 0900 - 1600: JUMP! (time depends on weather)
- 1200 - 1900: Go back to Cambridge (depends on vital signs)

I'm sure I'll be fine, but just in case: you guys rock. See you on the other side!

Choral Evensong LIVE

2005-02-16T18:04:00.000Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/choralevensong/pip/nu60m/

Here's a recording of evensong we did this afternoon, live. Go to Listen Again and find choral evensong - that's us!

Work and play

2005-02-15T12:31:00.000Z

As I may have mentioned (I can't remember if I did or not), I've swapped my shifts from Wednesday night to Monday night. Last night was my first day on a Monday, and I must say, it was rather interesting! The clientele differ completely, and I must say, I rather enjoyed it. Had some interesting conversations, including talking with a guy that sells porn and adult goods for a living :) Spoke quite a while with this girl as well, she was very nice (in a friendly way that is), she said she's a regular, so hopefully might see her again at some point... You really learn to appreciate conversation when you're stuck for 5 hours without it, believe me.

I've been reading Three Men in a Boat at work (well, just started yesterday), and although I initially thought it was boring, it's turning out to be quite funny. That's another thing about being somewhere with little to do, it forces you to follow things through... I've read so much I wouldn't have otherwise, and I've really enjoyed it for the most part - I finished reading Vile Bodies last week, which wasn't fantastic, but still an engaging read, if anything because of the use of language.

My group project is such a huge amount of work, it's kinda wearing me down a little... Still, gonna (hopefully) be doing more popping practise tomorrow, that'll get me motivated... My moves are getting a lot better, but I'm lacking in cohesion and leg-work - I intend to improve this of course. My hat came in the post today :) Need to go and collect it from the post-office at some point, looking forward to trying it on :)

I sent you a text and all, but happy birthday again Mark. I've been relegated to youngest member of the trio for a couple of months :( But yeah, whatever - I still have an excuse for making stupid decisions, what's yours guys? Eh? Hah.

I've been playing a lot of games recently, really getting back into them in a big way... My current favourite is Anachronox (a forgotten RPG that used the Quake 2 engine and came from Ion Storm - very humourous in places) - I've played that for almost 10 hours now, in the space of about a week... Quite a lot. Also, Lyss got me Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, which I look forward to playing through with her (it's primarily a multiplayer game, and each player *REQUIRES* a gba to play :p - the single-player can work with a pad however) - I also intend to complete Paper Mario 2 at some point as well, gotten quite far through that...

Anyway, what's up with you guys? Especially you James, you've not said anything in ages! (other than to comment on our posts that is)

Birthday

2005-02-13T18:04:00.000Z

I had a rather nice birthday! Lots of surprises.

Yesterday my Mum and brother came up, and we had lunch at Nando's. Had an interesting chat about education, politics, jobs... I mentioned my parachute jump to my Mum and I think she took it rather well. She's worried, understandably, but is supportive.

My brother bought me one of those cool little indoor helicopters :) Y'know, like the one Dave has? I haven't had the chance to try it out yet, I don't have a 9V battery.

Del was over the entire weekend, spent lots of quality time together. She bought me a silver bracelet - though I don't know whether that's the masculine name for it. Last week she took my ring to get it engraved for Valentine's as well (I didn't even notice it had gone :/). I'm all kitted out, jewelry-wise :)

So after Del went home this morning I was feeling a little down, and so I went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Then Stef (a friend on my corridor) came in and said hello, then asked me to come and kill a spider for her in her kitchen (which isn't particularly out of the ordinary, but I guessed what was coming). So I follow Stef to the other kitchen and it's bursting with people who broke into "Happy Birthday" as I walked in. There was a cake with candles that Stef and Liz had baked for me (and as I understand it they went to an awful lot of trouble, given that we don't have ovens!), camera flashes going off left right and centre, laughing... They made a massive card full of pictures and signatures. I was given a bottle of wine as well! After spending about an hour (or more... no idea) in there chatting with everyone, it was time to get back to work, so I went back to my room to find another surprise on my desk. Monika had written me a little card wishing me well, containing two cinema tickets as well. So sweet.

Ahh... if I were (any more of) a girl I would have cried.

20 years. Not all that long, really.

lol

2005-02-10T21:52:00.000Z

I've left an enormous skid mark at the bottom of the bowl

Who Decides...

2005-02-10T09:53:00.000Z

...that 9.30am is a good time for fire alarm tests? Urrrrrgh.

Parachute Jump

2005-02-09T18:17:00.000Z

It's time to start collecting sponsors for my parachute jump. What can I put you guys down for? Again, as much or as little as you can manage. If you really can't manage anything at all, don't worry. Please reply, positive or negative!

So, otherwise, I've been swamped with work. Recently started going through partial differentiation in maths, Gibb's free energy in Materials, Electro/Magnetostatics in Physics and triploblasts, deuterostomes and coelomates in Evolution and Behaviour. Almost had a second supervision cancelled today because I (we) didn't do the work that was set, but we convinced her that we just didn't understand it, which is true. So we had a short supervision.

Got an essay for E&B to write for tomorrow morning. I can choose between these two essay titles:

"Explain the terms triploblast, coelomate and deuterostome. Using examples, show how these definitions are important in a traditional view of animal phyla. Briefly explain how this view is being challenged by molecular data."

"What is a phylum? Discuss two characteristics of living vertebrates that reflect conserved features of the chordate body plan, and two innovations that have played a major role in the subsequent evolution of vertebrates."

What's gay about these essay titles is that there's really not much to say about them, or so it seems. I won't have any trouble trying to 'keep it to 4 pages, maximum'.

The other day this girl I know criticised me for not going out enough, not enjoying myself, doing too much work. This really fucked me off. First of all, she has only two days a week in which she has lectures, and only one supervision a week, and that is it. I have only one day a week in which I don't have any lectures (Sunday!), and have four supervisions a week, and 8 hours of practicals a week. You could say that I have as much as quadruple her workload, on top of extra lectures etc.. I was pissed off about her comments for days!

Anyway, really needed to vent. This essay I'm gonna write tonight is gonna read like shit judging by this post ;o

Remember: add a comment indicating how much you'll sponsor me for, even if it's zero!^[1]

1: Please note that negative numbers are not acceptable.

Popping... and no news?

2005-02-09T17:24:00.000Z

Hey dudes, what's with the silence? I've been eagre to hear what you two have been up to!

Me? I've just spent like around 1.5 hours popping :) Getting a lot better, starting to look respectable even! My side-slide is improving too, although I still can't really do it properly without a smooth floor. My hat was shipped earlier in the week too, looking forward to that arriving a lot. That and the coming of summer in the not *too* far future...

I've started back on my various projects - I've almost completed a nice little thing for cslib that allows everything to be stored seperately, but linked (compile-linked and symbolic-linked) to one location. At the moment, everything's installed into seperate prefixes, making sharing libraries very hassle-some. This new system allows the seperate prefixes to still exist, but for a new shared location to also exist, meaning all libraries are in one place (a good thing). Unionfs I've started work on again as well, hopefully I'll have that working adequately within a week or two...

What are you planning for valentine's guys? Anything special? Lyss and I are going to Pizza Hut... It's kind of a sentimental thing though, because that's like the first restaurant we ever went to together (that and we love pizza :)). Really not sure what to get her... I think she's got me Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, which is nice :) I'll probably get her some sort of game or something, but I'm not sure...

Anyway, tell me what you're up to!

Some advice... and unionfs :)

2005-02-06T23:15:00.000Z

James, I think you need to learn to live with some discontentment, at least for a while. I have been extraordinarily lucky, in that I've known my calling pretty much all of my memorable life. Not entirely a good thing, but it certainly helps you feel content at the end of the day. I believe that you haven't found exactly what you want to be doing, and I'd hazard a guess that the longer you spend without knowing what you want to do, the harder it becomes to find out what it is you want to do.

Perhaps you already know, but you lack the conviction to throw yourself at it full tilt?

Until either situation changes, learn to live with this uncertainty - I can't speak from experience I'm afraid, so this may make my advice sound a little hollow, but I'm sure plenty of other people live with the same problem every day without feeling any the worse for it. Maybe you can take some happiness from it? Me, I have a basic outline for how the rest of my life will probably turn out. That can be a little disheartening at times; where as you, you still have the potential to be any number of things!

And like Mark said, as for it not being about you - it clearly is... Given that we see the world from our own perspective, it's hardly surprising that our thought processes revolve around ourselves. The likelihood of a truly (within reason, don't start with quantum theory or whatever...) random comment is quite low.

As for me, I'm feeling alright at the moment :) I'm not in a 'work' mood yet, I've just spent my post-exam time chilling so far (which took that awesome night out for me to realise this is what I needed).

When I supposed my idea to a post-grad friend of mine (about unionfs in regards to software located at multiple locations under multiple prefixes), he almost straight away came back with the problem of hard-coded paths when compiling applications. I figured out the solution today :) I was thinking about it incorrectly - unfortunately, you cannot just install to a seperate prefix, you need to install to the 'root' prefix (i.e. /usr). The magic comes in that before making the install target, you unionfs mount the prefix directory over whatever directory you've unionroot'd with the highest priority before installing - Then it'll get installed to the prefix, but be prepared to execute on the 'root'. Problem solved :)

I'm planning on making some scripts for all this, that use symlinking to simulate the features of unionfs somewhat... Given that I can't actually use unionfs in labs at the moment - I'll try to bribe help-desk into compiling the kernel module though, but I *VERY* much doubt this will happen. If it does, I will be a happy bunny :) Will find out tomorrow.

Also, Mark, that question looks like piss compared to the last question on my latest Scheme coursework that took me TEN fucking hours and ended up as like 12 lines of code :p (ends up the theory to the solution is quite simple, just implementation is a little more complex... Everything is easier in retrospect though...)

God dame

2005-02-06T20:03:00.000Z

Look at this physics question:

Consider a thin disc of radius a with charge density 'sigma'. Show that the electric field at a distance x along the axis that passes through the centre of the disc (perpendicularly) is given by

I did it, but man, these questions take fucking ages...

I've done 2 in about 4 hours and I have 8 more to do. And that's only Physics. I've got Maths (Lagrange Multipliers, anyone?), Materials (Mmm, entropy and enthalpy!) and Evolution & Behaviour work to do as well, all for Tuesday, except the essay for E&B which is due in on Thursday.

Yais...

2005-02-04T16:22:00.000Z

I'm curious that despite my overt protestations that I wasn't fishing or looking for reassurance, you have both made comments about me :P Still, the thought is appreciated.

I'm not feeling depressive at all about this, just curious about the mentality behind it, which many others seem to exhibit.

I'd probably feel better if I were doing performance instead of English! At least there I feel I have some potential to be actually quite good.

Actually, I quite enjoy doing bugger all, but I don't think I'm supposed to think that...I don't feel especially compelled to read these books they tell me to read...

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be about me! I wasn't looking for compliments or reassurance, because there isn't an issue!

What do you think of my THEORY?

Mark - I agree that the subdivision of "subjects" is largely arbitrary, and of course, until recently when one went to university all you did was a "degree" in everything. The other thing about English here is that those subdivision groupings tend to be orientated those who are most powerful in the group and/or the supervisor, which means that a unique outlook is very often ignored or morphed into their subset.

I found that keeping an open mind was actually a negative at the start of the year, as it meant that I didn't have a "bosom buddy" to do everything with - I was talking to everyone and didn't latch onto anyone in the first five minutes. The same remains true in classes - there's one person who's really into women's rights and psychology, and guess what comes up ALL THE TIME (gah). There's a time and place, obviously, but more interesting things are usually there!

However, I don't think you're points logically fit. You claim that there will always be someone better than you at a skill, yet seem to deny that these "skills" as discrete packages exist. I think it is possible to be "co-best" - I mean, who would argue about who is the better actor out of Toms Cruise and Hanks?

And this is where the problem with hoop jumping rears its head - without the fluidity to flow into one's own niche (or discover it), it becomes rigid - and worse, one judges oneself within other people's sets of standards and skill groups.

To be personal for a second, I have overcome the "simple arguments" about this - as you said Mark (in your nearly patronising tone :P) we've been over this before. I appreciate myself as a unique individual blah blah etc. It's the nuances and difficulty of knowing what you LIKE - which I think is a terribly difficult question, since it incorporates not only what you want to do NOW but later, and also a set of intermediary goals you don't want. The path of least resistance is not usually the best, or rather, one has to apply some resistance oneself, if you know what I mean.

I suppose what I'm really asking about perfectly encapsulates part of the title of the blog - convergent individuals on divergent paths. I feel as if I should be diversifying now - but when I try, all I find is people who have done it before and made the rules, and find myself converging - in an inevitably inferior way, for the reasons outlined above.

I'm not looking for some metaphysical "learn to love yourself" crap, as I already do and know that. I'm not looking for anything for myself, per se. But I think it's a rather unique ability to not make decisions, and, as we've discussed before, allowing things to happen to oneself, that makes problems when the questions of making a unique life for oneself and also in questions of creativity - true originality (whether this owes anything to previous works or not).

I've ceased knowing what I'm talking about.

The Persistent "Everyone Else is Better" Syndrome

2005-02-04T13:29:00.000Z

Now boys, we all remember the strained period when I kept asking you for ego massages. Although this post is related, I would to begin with a disclaimer that I am not fishing for compliments, but commenting on a phenenomenarium.

It seems to me that EVERYONE here in Cambridge has a bit of thing about everyone else on their course being cleverer than them. I have counselled many people against this view of themselves, but somehow am unable to purge myself of the same irrationality. I observe people going to lectures for papers we're not currently studying; people picking quotes out of thin air; people developing complex theories out of nowhere; people reading critical texts; etc.

This is partly to do with my laziness, but also my public school inability to jump around the hoops, or engage my creativity at will. May also be partly to do with the fact that I'm not THAT interested in the subject.

However, another theory I've sort of developed is that anything that you haven't previously thought of yourself SEEMS clever. So, in my case, if someone comes at a text from a different direction, or sees something in an image I hadn't spotted, it seems clever. If, however, someone says something I've already thought of, it seems commonplace and boring.

The only problem with this is that my own ideas always seem boring to me! It's only on the occasions I sort of weird out with people that I realise that I say some pretty odd things sometimes, and my creativity is actually engaged quite a lot - but I don't know I'm doing it, obviously, because it seems normal.

Was just wondering whether you had any views on this. I wonder whether it's the same at Southampton, where there is less latent elitism - or is there? And is it the same in the sciences, where it's pretty much "can you do it or can't you", "do you know it or don't you"? Obviously in the art of computer science this question will be a little more complicated.

Is it anything to do with my/our psychological orientation, or is there a general unawareness of one's own originality, since one gets used to it?

Awesome night.

2005-02-04T02:12:00.000Z

Wow, I just had an awesome night :)

As you may have deduced by my final exam being this morning, my exams for this semester are over! Initially, I was left with a stranded, empty feeling... When you lose such a strong focus so suddenly, it does odd things to one's psyche.

The perfect solution, however, was to go out and have some fun! Yes, I know what you're thinking... 'Go... OUT?!?' - But that I did. I was invited to go bowling with Chris and his friends. Understand that I've never met his friends before, and I'm not usually one for meeting new people, or even going out. My mood at that point was still depressed, and I was in one of those states of minds where you'd agree to anything (much like I was when I decided to start going to London), just to be doing something - so I agreed. I started to regret it soon after. "I've no idea who these people are!" I thought. The potential to get molested is always higher when you involve more people.

The night wore on. It opened well, I got a strike, a 9, then two strikes! My best run ever - My play deteriorated soon after, but I finished with a not too disrespectable 92 (given my initial score however, that was of course terrible). The bowling game was a little uncomfortable - Chris' friend and his two flat-mates were the other participants. Chris' friend was excellent. He just WAS Andrew (Whyton). I immediately liked him, if anything for the resemblence, but the fact that he acted in almost the exact same way only made it better :) However, the other two flat-mates were very anti-social... Which just made it a bit hard, given that I didn't have much of a hook into Mike (the Andrew look-alike) and I couldn't talk to them... Things were soon to get better though.

We were about to drive back to The Hobbit, but I decided to walk because I wasn't feeling great (I stupidly decided to have some beer - didn't even finish my pint :p) - And so I walked to The Hobbit. The walk invigorated me and not only did I feel better physically, but it improved my mood somewhat too (although by then, I had already cheered up a little). When we got to The Hobbit, I found them sitting at a table upstairs (usually a hard place to secure) with two new girls (the two anti-social ones had left and gone to The Dungeon - hurray!). I introduced myself and we all had a bit of a chat and it was nice :)

We progressed out to the beer garden, where there were more new people! I introduced myself to a couple, but we were still two seperate groups at that point, so not much happened. At this point, I got to know Mike a little better - he does Politics, and he's a very no-nonsense kinda chap. At the same time though, he's charming and quite a laugh - JUST like Andrew, it's uncanny... So me, Mike, Chris and a new girl, Sarah, were all chatting a bit... And out of nowhere, my friend (and Chris') Mat turns around! Mat's always a good laugh, so that livened things up a bit right there

To make a long and not-so-interesting story short, the rest of the night was just pleasant conversation, a dildo (bought as a joke from the women's toilets for this guy - That was Mat's group that did that though, not ours), meeting more new people (theatre people, James! You'd have loved them...) and a nice atmosphere :)

I think tonight has gone some way to curing me of my slight fear of going out and social occassions... All three of us are a bit hermit-like, but I'd say I was the worst of us before today...

Anyway, as you may be able to tell, I'm in a good mood!

The exam didn't go particularly well (not as well as any of the others anyway, except maybe compiler engineering...), but I don't care :)

Score!

2005-02-03T08:50:00.000Z

Well boys, much as I hate to talk to you teenagers down there, I have to say that being twenty is the best thing ever. My body feels more manly, I have grown a sculpted chin overnight and my jokes have become more sophisticated. Oh yais.

I actually forgot it was my birthday when I woke up, and then the radio said the date, and then I forgot again. I remember now.

Camilla sent me a nice package - some Mr Men sponge cakes and a bar of chocolate to tide me over, as well as a soppy card and my Animatrix DVD that she though she'd lost.

Money from most others - and that fucking Da Vinci Code from Gloria and Malcolm!
a) It's shockingly crap - you can tell this because it was #1 best-seller
b) I don't have time to read crap books, because Shakespeare is a little more prominent on my course

Not that I'm ungrateful, you understand.

Chris - good luck for your exam which is in 3 minutes.
Mark - keep going - serves you right for being so easily convinced by my facile elitist arguments for Cambridge.

Nearly there boys! Be irresponsible and selfish for as long as you can! It's hard up here!

With love from your mature twenty-year-old pal.

A bit of humour...

2005-02-02T19:32:00.000Z

A byte walks into a bar and orders a pint. Bartender asks him "What's wrong?" Byte says "Parity error." Bartender nods and says "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off."

Nearly over...

2005-02-01T23:25:00.000Z

aaah, exams nearly over - the feeling is good! I just have NOT been ARSED to revise for tomorrow morning's though, I hate the subject too much to concentrate on anything I read about it... Hopefully the experience of doing the two courseworks and going to a few of the lectures (perversely, my highest attendence is in this module) will be enough for me to get around half-mark's or so, which is approximately all I need to get a 1st in the subject.

Unionroot has taken a turn for the worse and the better - I think I figured out why it wasn't working completely correctly, but the solution requires me to rewrite a core script :p No biggie though... Once I'm done, I plan on writing a documentation/proposal on how it can be used for networked work-places and universities for sharing applications, maybe even get it used in labs. I was also thinking of taking a look at GoboLinux (google it) and modifying it to use unionroot/unionfs, to see how well it scales... All interesting ideas anyway, hopefully I'll have the time to go about a couple :p

Mark - You're bloody brave to go parachuting - how the hell did you get into that one?! What does sponsorship involve, given my state of poorness? I'd like to sponsor, but obviously, I can't afford much at all...

As for the 'this is happening now', I often find myself in a semi-3rd person perspective position for an extended amount of time, doing trivial tasks - then I realise and I'm all like 'wtf?!', but I don't think that's quite the same thing. Either way, James is right - MORE SLEEP.

Oh, and happy birthday James (for 35 minutes time) :)

Tempting fate

2005-02-01T17:31:00.000Z

On the 20^th of February, I will be jumping out of an aeroplane! I will be parachuting for charity!

Other than that, not much is happening here. It's James' birthday day after tomorrow, and mine in just under a couple of weeks. No plans for either occasion yet, it seems...

I did a massive belch in the dinner hall today - the whole room (of about 300 people) fell silent for a few seconds, and then errupted into applause. How wonderful.

BTW, feel free to sponsor me for my jump! It goes to charity! (Spread amoung about 80 different ones.)

This is Happening Now!

2005-01-30T01:42:00.000Z

I can't say I've ever experienced the phenomena of TIME shifting that you describe, except possibly under extreme fatigue, or when I wake up and wonder how I'm going to explain the fact I cheated on Camilla, or get over my mother's death at the hands of a dinosaur.

Maybe you just don't get enough sleep? Are your dream functions seeping into real life? Are you seeing Tetris blocks?

An interesting phenomenum I noticed today - how if I stare in a certain way, the page of a book ceases to be text I can read and becomes a raw image instead, slightly distanced from it. The white of the page dulls a bit, and I become conscious of the interpretative act of reading. I can rectify this by "just reading it", except when I'm tired.

Sleep more.

Recently...

2005-01-29T14:48:00.000Z

Recently I've been getting "this is happening right now...!" thoughts every now and then, which is much more than usual. But in the last couple of days, it's become "Is this happening now, or is this just a memory?". That happened about 5 minutes ago, last. It's so incredibly odd - I honestly wasn't sure for several seconds whether I was viewing a memory or experiencing the present. I think that mental state links in with "passive activity" that I've probably mentioned before.

Me and My Girl

2005-01-28T19:54:00.000Z

Just to let you know that Me and My Girl will be performed on 15th - 19th February at 7.30 at the Arts Theatre Cambridge, with matinees on Thursday and Saturday at 2.30, the latter of which will have a sign language interpreter!

Box Office: 01223 503333
Tickets 5/12/15/20 pounds.

Just done the publicity photos in my tux, against various lamposts in Cambridge. I have probably collected the scent of numerous dogs.

Blog Development

2005-01-28T19:50:00.000Z

Is this new idea something you'd like to develop? I think it would be rather neat to have a sort of mind map/spider diagram layout, with the main post in the middle, and small comments around the periphery. Then related, longer posts, could also be represented by coloured circles, etc, and eventually a "web" of ideas could be developed. Of course this structure already exists, but some sort of animated sprawl of posts could be rather exciting.

Idea

2005-01-28T19:20:00.000Z

I don't think it's at all worth bothering with all that for the purpose of our communication, Chris. Just my feelings though. On the other hand, it strikes me that there are no (effective) means for groups of people to communicate online, and not in real-time. Mailing lists can just get messy and annoying getting emails in your inbox all the time. This blog works, more or less, but the commenting system doesn't really lend itself to our situation. A wiki might work a bit better, but its structure would really need to be thought through carefully.

I'm thinking of a topic/conversation/thread based structure, where people can add their thoughts to it. Here's a working title for such a service: "The Big Conversation". I think it's actually quite a neat idea! Although, mailinglists do follow pretty much exactly the same scheme, except for the layout and access mechanism. Something to think about, Chris...

Oooh, I went to a snooker club this afternoon with a friend - £5 life membership, £3 an hour (with student discount) up until 7pm. Not bad! The cues and tables are excellent as well. It's called WT's, and it's on a side road on Newmarket Road just after APU (heading out of the city centre). I think you should join up James, we should have a game sometime.

This blog, perl, German magazines, updates...

2005-01-28T16:25:00.000Z

Cool about your design Mark :) Seems German computer magazines are pretty cool like that, I had Blind Fury in a German magazine years ago - Although that must've been a bit of a shitty magazine, considering... hehe

I agree with your comment on comments, James... It's not that big a deal to read comments seperately, but it would be nice if it just displayed them underneath the post in this case - What I was thinking is if we used Blogger's sftp upload feature to upload the blog to my web-space, I can wrap all this up in some Perl scripts so we can format it how we like (you could design the CSS and template, I can get Perl to put things in the right place) - That way, we could have comments underneath posts, or even folding lists of comments using CSS or something like that (that'd be neat!) - Could even have new-comment notifications along with bookmark links at the top of the page... You'd still update using the Blogger interface, but you'd view it from whatver domain (I could set it up so my main site points to it, or a subdomain). What do you think Mark? If you do a page design, I'll do the scripts.

Just did my scripting techniques exam - Think I did quite well there, hopefully heading for a first in that module :) One of the questions was a real bitch though, shame I didn't learn any .Net, could've done an easier question :p

Anyway, your thoughts, guys?

Tetris Dreamin'

2005-01-28T10:53:00.000Z

I knew it wasn't just me!

Updates

2005-01-28T10:43:00.000Z

Blog changes:

Both of you are now admins! Don't break the site, please.
Blog name changed to "The Contemporary Annals [...]".
Potentially: I can change the subdomain (I think), from markrian(.blogspot.com). Suggestions? I didn't wanna change it yet cos then neither of you would be able to get here.

Instead of me commenting to the relevant blogs, I think it'll just be a lot easier to write my own. In fact can I suggest that instead of comments, we just write a new posts? Comments are handled rather cumbersomely, I find, making them a pain to read/reply to. Just try to dump a stack of comments into post so things don't become too messy.

Now James, you say you got up an hour early for a lecture? Duddums. What time was your lecture? Midday? DAMN, you must be exhausted.

Chris, I understood what you said, but I don't see how a script can cause X apps not to run, unless there's more to it than that ;o

As for news on my end, I've received all my exams results back. Maths was by far the best, with a score of 68% (almost a 1^st), leaving Materials and Mineral Sciences a distant 2^nd at 47%, and Physics just scraping a 3^rd (in both senses). Bearing in mind I actually did absolutely no preparatory work, apart from the work I did the previous term, I think I did rather well. I now have shitloads to do before Monday, which is ridiculous, and I want to cry.

More excitingly, I was emailed yesterday by some guy who found my ChrisLord.net design on OSWD.org. He told me he loved the design and will use it when he reworks his site. That's not the exiting bit; I get that all the time. He went on to tell me that the design, my design, was mentioned and referred to in a German computer magazine, describing how to quickly and easily set up a great website!

!!

As for your site Chris, why would you need a new design? And what exactly do you mean by "redesign my website to use [Perl]"?

P.S. I've just noticed that my computer clock is showing extraordinary amounts of drift... about 5mins/day. I knew something wasn't right! Any ideas Chris on how to correct this? NTP daemons don't work behind this (fucking) proxy...

EDIT -- Here's an email from the guy about the magazine!

Mark,

> Glad you like the design! The icons/images are attached.

Many thanks !

> You say that my design was mentioned in a German computer magazine? I know
> this is a bit vain, but can you tell me the exact name of the magazine and
> the issue number which mentions it? I'd very much appreciate it!
>

c't magazin für computer technik (German) : Issue number 3 from 24
January 2005

Article : Praxis - Instant-Websites : They are speaking about creating
websites using templates (commercial and free) and they tested some free
WYSIWYG editors with your ChrisLord_dot_net_v45 template.

Best regards and thank you again,
Romain

--
Romain Petges
http://www.petges.com

Structure

2005-01-28T10:22:00.000Z

It strikes me that our so far intuitive use of new posts and comments has been ok, but hardly ideal if we seriously want to keep this going.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the blog is - obviously to keep in touch easily primarily, but I wonder if we could also run it as a more standard blog, with news items, commentaries, "Big Questions", funny things, projects etc?

And, just as we have been doing, comments should be short, inconsequential notes, and any major objections/treatises to the content of a post should go in a new post, I reckon.

If you agree, say so in comments - otherwise, a new post? Nah, that doesn't really work, does it? Let's just leave it intuitive...shall we?

Thoughts

2005-01-28T01:52:00.000Z

Mark, I think you should update the name of this blog to "The Contemporary Annals of a Convergent Trio on Divergent Paths" - I like it, and seeing as James suggested it, I'm assuming he likes it... And the blog being called 'markrian' is a bit annoying :p

Anyway, during revision, I've come to the realisation that Perl is an awesome language :) So I'm going to redesign my website to use it... But this also means I need a new design - I was thinking of using your essay design Mark... Unless you want to design something new and fairly similar? :)

Also, if I don't speed up this revision slightly, I'm only likely to get quite a low mark, unless Perl plays a much greater part in it than it has in previous papers... (I hope it does)

Unionroot causes all X apps to segfault on startup it seems... Need to debug that, probably my mounting scripts messing things up somehow... Everything seems to work find though outside of X, so it's gonna be a hard one :/ Need to get someone to test Opie ideally...

Not that that means all that much to either of you I guess :p

How's things going with you two?

[Edit: btw Mark, rhythmbox in Debian unstable now supports wmas! :D]

General update

2005-01-27T11:09:00.000Z

Just had another exam... Didn't go too well, but hopefully my coursework (A, 70+ :)) will bring it up - I've almost certainly passed at least, but I'd quite like to get over 60 (unlikely with my performance in the exam though...).

I had Operating Systems yesterday, which I think I already told Mark in an e-mail (or did I?) - I did pretty well in that, very pleased :) I should do well in the coursework, so I expect 65 overall at the very least - and hopefully over 70 (1st).

In other news, I finished my preliminary work on a unionfs based root-filesystem for PDA's in OpenEmbedded - It seems to conflict with X at the moment, which is obviously no good... There's something wrong because I had it working before, so I'll experiment a bit with that... I'd like to get it done pretty soon - Minimo has finally started to become pretty good :) Check these shots out:

It loads and runs pretty fast as well I can confirm :)

Also, Microsoft are about to REALLY shoot themselves in the foot :) Looks like they'll be a fair few migrations to different systems quite soon I think.

I'm sure looking forward to the exams being over... Got one that I'm really not going to do well in again tomorrow :/ (although once again, a good coursework mark should save me)

Shameless Plug

2005-01-26T23:16:00.000Z

Sorry, hadn't appreciated the whole comments thing, and so made a new post.

I'm on telly Thursday at 7pm - Holocaust Memorial Service. Singing with the choir - a few nice shots of me looking angelic. Tell your friends!...Wait...

I expect a detailed review.

Ooh! Neat!

2005-01-26T22:56:00.000Z

Good idea Mark, good.

MuskEteers. As in "men who wield muskets". Although classically swordfighters. Hm.

How about "Boring Students"? Or "The Collected Wisdom of Three Extraordinary Young Men of Learning"? Or, "The Contemporary Annals of a Convergent Trio on Divergent Paths"? Or "Chris', James' and Mark's Blog"? "That's my momma!" Group Y (ooh!)? "Ummm....Pfff...Chef?"

I don't really know.

Blog name-change

2005-01-26T20:14:00.000Z

What shall we call this blog?

I suggested 'The Three Muskateers', but Mark quite rightly pointed out that that was quite gay. He then suggested a variation of Two Blokes and a Blob (e.g. 2BnB, 2B&B, 2BB, etc.) - which I'd be quite happy with...

Any other suggestions?

Leave a comment on this entry.

First post!

2005-01-26T16:47:00.000Z

My first post on my blog!

Now, the question is how to let more than one person post to this blog, whilst appearing as the correct person. Hmm. Possible? Perhaps! -- UPDATE! Yes, it is possible! How quality! :o

Don't worry too much guys, I can change the name of the blog at any time ;o

Wow, I'm rather impressed with Blogger - excellent interface, quick to set up, no gay ads... :) And, group blogs!

I've not got much to say at the moment, other than I have a lot of work to do. Oh, James, you're probably not aware that I've quit rowing now (well, am quitting)... It turned out to be just too much. I have enough trouble keeping up with work as it is :p

Well... guess it's time for me to be hitting the ol' dusty road...