Tales of Interest

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Aug. 27th, 2004

05:09 pm - So, you wasted three years of your life...

Well, with my life currently stuck in the mud, I am having ample time to contemplate the exact cause of my current predicament. The housing issue aside, my future job prospects are laid before me in what I had hoped to be a beautiful panorama of sparkling jobs as far as the eye can see, but is in fact a lot more like a sewage filled bog of stink, with floating shopping trolleys, and burnt out Skodas. If that wasn't entirely clear, I would simply say that my job prospects seem to have got worse since getting a degree.

Before the degree, I got many horrible jobs through Temp agencies, which while thoroughly demeaning, did save my financial arse a few times. Now, what typically happens is that I walk into an agency, tell them my situation, and am promptly told to leave immediately, without making a fuss. So what’s the cause of this? Is it entirely my fault, due to either my own naivety or ignorance? Possibly.

First things first. Oxford Brookes has been often described as the 'best new-university' which is quite a claim, except where you look at the competition. It’s quite clear that beating Brighton, Sheffield Hallam and Manchester Metropolitan isn't the sort of victory one might tell of in song or perhaps epic poem. So while it’s the best of a new mediocre crop of universities, its still only rated 54th best in England by those Times university judging people.

While the actual source of my degree hasn't yet directly caused me to not get any jobs, it doesn't take a leap of logic to realise that the actually content of my degree may make me slightly less employable than say, those lucky people at the 53rd best university in England. For an example of why this may be true, read my update regarding the poor quality of lecturers at Brookes to see what we had to not only put up with, but motivate us to take a 45 minutes bus trip on a bus which will probably just go right past is, in order to be in a place where we have to put up with them. The place itself was no picnic either. With the horrible tower of Wheatley looming above us like a giant monument to suicide-inducingly poor architecture, the rest of the campus seemed positively bleak and desolate in comparison.

I can't blame all my problems on Wheatley though, no matter how much I try. During my second year I had a choice, a very important choice. The choice of whether or not to do a gap year. At the time I was doing several awful modules, and working my ass of at Somerfield just to afford to do them, and basically wanted the education to be over as soon as possible, so I chose not to do the gap year. Unfortunately, this means that I opted out of a year’s invaluable experience. This was probably pretty stupid, probably.

Almost all jobs require experience, yes, even 'graduate' jobs. It’s not uncommon to see graduate vacancies demand between 2-5 years experience. I'm not sure precisely what type of graduate they mean to hire, possibly magic graduates who have called upon the arcane forces of industrial experience to imbue their souls with dangerously high amounts of knowledge and power. I mean, just how are you supposed to get these compulsory 2-5 years experience? You need the same amount of experience to get any job which would give you said experience. So HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GET IT? HUH? HUH? HUUUHHH??

I would offer to work for free to get the experience, only I can't do that due to needing money to live, obviously. Another problem is that a lot of jobs require knowledge of new languages like C# and Visual Basic.net . Now, it would be as simple as pie to learn these languages, but that doesn't quite cut it you see. To get a job in which you need one of these new languages, you can't just say 'sure, I know that. I do it all the time', oh no. You need proof, like say, a degree? We didn't learn anything that will actually help us in our degree, that would have been too convenient. So, without further ado, here is a list of everything I learnt at University, and why it is completely useless.

Introduction to Microcomputer Applications

Okay, this is too easy. It was a module designed to teach non-computing students how to use Microsoft Word and Excel. I mean, I'd been using both for years, it was totally redundant.

Structured Programming

This module spent two thirds of the year teaching us FOR..NEXT loops, and other simple things. It wasn't well taught enough to teach people who didn't yet know how to program, but was far too simple to be useful to people who already knew how to program. Useful Huh? To top it off, it started the annoying use of Delphi that dogged us throughout the rest of the degree. Now let’s get this straight: Delphi Fucking Sucks. It’s no better than Visual Basic in terms of functionality or speed, in fact the bugs and slowness mean that it’s several steps down from VB. There are not positive reasons to use it whatsoever, and its disjointed interface is buggy and bits often get lost. If one part crashes, it can lock your whole machine, etc. It’s just plain awful, yet we used it all the time.

Basically, anyone who didn't already know the stuff on this module would be best advised to get up, walk out, and find a different subject to do. If you can't program, what the hell are you doing here?

Introduction to Information Systems

Back in the 80s, everyone wanted to by 'Systems Analysts', it was the latest craze. This job function is still very popular, but the title has been extended to 'Information Systems Analysis'. Basically, its people who don't know how to program telling programmers what to program, when designing software for large companies. Its pseudo-computing, and mainly consists of thousands of useless diagrams that people ignore. I have no desire to get into this sort of thing, and in fact there doesn't seem to be much demand for these people in the job market. This module taught us to hate the subject. Being a basic module it also contained almost no useful skills. Maybe the more advanced modules would be more useful?

Discrete Mathematics

Ah Discrete Mathematics, sometimes known as Decision and Discrete. I remember you from A-Levels. I mean really remember. Wait, it’s exactly the same thing?? Oh well. At least it was an easy pass. This stuff is simple, but nothing particularly useful outside of gaining a slightly better understanding of programming.

C and Unix: Principals and Good Practice

Now this is more like it. Something that real people use, C! and UNIX! It went slightly beyond Structured Programming in C, but not much beyond, it got stalled around pointers. If only more of the degree had been on these things. Well, sort of. The module didn't actually allow us to use UNIX machines, only telnet into one, and cope with horrible laggy connection/program, where the backspace key doesn't work. It’s just not exactly what I was expecting.

Foundations of Intelligent Systems

AI! Did we learn how to program almost human computers that may one day run our global defence network? No. We didn't program anything at all. I can't remember what we did learn, by the way. I remember writing an essay on counter-strike bots, and getting good marks for it though. I'm sure with this knowledge, many games companies would be eager to employ me for my intense knowledge of what makes a computer seem human. Oh wait.

IT Assisted Communication and Study Methods

Did someone say 'what the hell is that about?' I thought so, and I wish I could tell you. I only have five memories of this module. I remember a lecture on how to use Excel (again). I remember a practical where we had to sign up to a website, and nothing else (scheduled time, 2 hours). I remember a lecture on how people cheat on exams. I remember a lecture on how to cite references using the Harvard system, and I remember doing a presentation with James, George and Random Female #17 on ordering Ice-cream over the internet. Funny, funny stuff.

Constructing Computer Software

This one may well have been entitled 'Pointers Confuse You!'. It was basically pointers taught in such a way as to confuse and annoy you, through the Delphi language. Delphi's implementation of pointers isn't exactly well defined. I seem to remember you had to put a ~ at either the front or the back of a variable, but it didn't seem to matter which. It worked just as well without the ~ in some cases. I'm not sure if we got as far as linked lists either. This basically gave us enough knowledge to do this...

Data Structures

'Pointers 2: Point Harder' It's like the last module, only we didn't get to actually use a computer, making it even less easy to understand. Lots of new and interesting ways of pointing to memory locations were introduced, including some where we could rotate the structures clock-wise and anti-clockwise, in fact we were encouraged too. The point of this activity was to try to get Delphi to produces new and amusing error messages for us all to laugh at, or at least it would have been had they university not taken out a restraining order on us, forbidding us from coming within 50 meters of a computer.

Program Structure

If there was ever a module that shone like a beacon of bad teaching, it was this one. Our lecturer spent most of his time making abortions in PowerPoint Form, hiding the coursework questions somewhere in these things, and writing insulting emails to people who can't decipher his majestic creations. He repeatedly demonstrated his tenuous grasp of email by trying to send us email attachments, but repeatedly forgetting to actually attach them. He also was one of the worst programmers I have ever met. Deciphering his code was like trying to solve a 4 dimensional Rubik’s-cube. Structures spanned 4 or more different modules, and were totally unusable. Also, every program he made said 'Thank you for using the jugs search engine'. Now, I never used a jugs search engine, and have no intention of ever doing so, but I made sure all my coursework followed his example.

The actually content was a rough lesson in iterative programming, but was any useful knowledge he had to give us was sadly hidden behind his supreme incompetence. He once sent everyone an email, after receiving tonnes of questions about his mistakes, telling us that if we didn't understand what he was talking about then we should transfer to a media studies degree. I'm starting to wish I had taken his advice.

Computer Hardware

Another poorly taught module if ever the was one. A two term description of how computers work internally. Sounds interesting, no? Well, it wasn't. I knew we were in trouble when the lecturer was trying to describe an insanely complicated thing called the 'Multicycle Datapath', when the lecturer just stopped talking, and stared at the horrible thing for about 3-4 minutes. He then turned to us and said 'Um, do any of you know whats going on here?', he was met with a barrage of blank stares and shrugs. If we actually went into the exciting field on Computer Hardware design, the contents of this module would only need to be completely forgotten to make room for actual information on the subject. This is a common theme with these Advanced Modules.

Information Systems Analysis and Design

Another exciting Information Systems module, now with 100% more UML. For those of you who don't know, UML is a useless made up language that non-programmers use to pretend they know what they are talking about. It isn't even actually a language, its just diagrams. Now, I guess that this module may have been useful in order to break into this stunningly boring field, but it was wasted on people who actually wanted to program. James, George and I had a pretty memorable interview regarding some terrible coursework we did, during which she said 'Do any of you actually know what a sequence diagram is??' To which we shuffled uncomfortably, and coughed a bit.

Decision Support Systems

This module taught us the value of teamwork, by paring me and George up with 3 stunningly lazy incompetent business students who didn't know how to do anything other than avoid work, and organise meetings that served no purpose. They had been trained well, unlike us. The module content tried to get us to simulate every road in Europe and Asia, and including ferry links and toll-bridges..... using Excel and Access. Now what the hell was the point of this? There’s no way we could do anything that would actually simulate everything, especially using tools designed for fundamentally different purposes. We also had to use Lotus Notes to communicate with each other, which is about 300 times harder than not using Lotus Notes to communicate with each other.

So in the end this module taught me to hate my team-members, fake evidence of lotus notes usage, and rigging up something that looked a bit like a simulation of two entire continents, but was actually just guessing and wasting time. You've got to laugh, though.

Vision

The first lecture was spent learning that its a lot harder to get PowerPoint and other Microsofty things working on Unix that its zealots would have you believe. Once set up though, we were taught the inner working of our eyes, and computers image processing things, using the miracle of Delphi. I programmed myself into a fatal memory leak, and submitted that. It didn't get terribly good marks. I doubt any of this stuff was detailed enough to be useful in a practical work-style application, not only because it was in Delphi, but also because things thousands of times more advanced already exist, so really, what's the point?

Multimedia Application Design

This was fun, and potentially useful. Design a website that uses new technologies like CSS, and XHTML, and SMIL. Wait SMIL? What the hell is SMIL? Well, its an incomplete language that is only supported by Real Media technologies, that can display a sequence of pictures with sounds, assuming everything is stored locally. Yes, they wasted our time with this... thing. Out of our group, I volunteered to learn SMIL. Oh what fun it was. Our website looked like a late 90s site, but did everything that was asked of it, and got good marks. Any of us could make a better website by ourselves, but we just couldn't be bothered.

Computer Networks

Another one of these modules about something very technical, that doesn't go nearly deep enough into the area to actually give us enough knowledge to be employed in the field. It sure did sound impressive though. They felt the need to balance one of the hardest, most technical areas they taught, with one of the most pointless and tedious methods of demonstrating your knowledge, the Poster Presentation! We got an A for making for making fun of their stupid poster presentation. This was the best thing we did jointly over the years.

The Human Computer Interface

This module was taken under operation 'don't fail degree', in which we decided to take easy sounding modules, to maximise the possibility actually passing them. The content of the module laboured under the assumed fact that 'interface designers' exist, and are an important part of the creative process. The fact is that while there some still around, there is hardly a shortage of them in the industry, because shortage implies that if they existed, there would be jobs for them to do. The module was also poorly taught, but that is incidental to the pointlessness, really. It bears mentioning that we were being taught how to design interfaces, in Delphi, so not particularly useful even if there were jobs in this field.

Logic Programming

Ah, Logic Programming. Where else would I turn to after I've run out of Boolean Algebra, why to its mad cousin predicate-calculus. I would like to say that I understand this silly branch of maths, but I would be just plain lying. This is probably linked to my failure to understand anything past the basics of prolog. Unfortunately, that’s 100% of this modules content. It would be a terrible thing to not understand something as important and useful sounding as predicate calculus, but really its pretty much a worthless addition to my vast knowledge. No-one uses prolog, and I can't think of any uses for the calculus either, outside of doing courseworks on it. There is certainly no job in which knowing this would be considered a plus, except of course for 'Logic Programming Lecturer'.

Advanced User Interfaces

Aha, another module picked because I would probably pass it. I didn't, but that’s another story. The first half was on adaptive interfaces, which are quite important these days, in that they are included in lots of programs these days, and promptly deactivated by irritated users. I'm not saying that there is no situation in which having your interface randomly rearrange itself might be useful, it’s just that I have never found one. The other half was on trying to make the internet more accessible to disabled people, who should really just admit that by being disabled, there are certain things that they won't really be able to do. So, a variety of awkward programs that our lecturer couldn't work were demonstrated to us, some of which she professed to have made herself, despite her inability to use them. So anyway, the employability usefulness of module is quite low.

E-Business

This module was not really a lesson in what to do, more one in what to not do. It would be best to take heed of everything the lectures and guest-lecturers said, and never do any of it. A bunch of failed dot-com start-ups nerds who wasted their venture capital and now lecture at Brookes shouldn't be regarded as anyone of importance. Needless to say, there is not much of a market for money-loosing internet nerds these days.

Software Project Management

Now this has actual genuine potential to get you a job. Project management is a complex skill that pays anyone who can master it well. Unfortunately the modules did a good job spelling out quite how hellish your life would be if you go into this field. It basically involves mediating between 4 bickering parties with completely different goals, and lying to them to keep them from suing your company. As far as I can tell anyway. When not doing that, you'll be generating silly excel spreadsheets that churn out numbers that don't really mean anything, like complexity factors, and KDSI.

Safety Critical Systems

The art of designing systems that don't explode killing people is sadly bogged down in countless safety legislation documents that are wordy but surprisingly vague. I can see a market for people who know this sort of thing, but have yet to find any jobs in the field.

Database Design

Right, now this one should be useful right? Right? They can't possibly fuck up something as common as database design? Can they? HUH? HUH? Well, they did. Instead of teaching us how to make useful databases in modern applications for use on today’s computers, they instead taught us how to make useless old databases, using an two ancient applications, on someone else’s computer. SQLPlus was 'almost' object-orientated. It wasn't though, so while we were learning about them, we couldn't make them given the tools available. While I gained a profound understanding of how to theoretically create a full functional database in Boyce-Codd Normal Form, I wouldn't have much idea how to do it in any application that modern companies would be interested in me using.

Computing Project
The idea of the computing project was to use everything you learnt at uni to make a wonderful program demonstrating your many talents. What I did however was use all the knowledge I obtained during my A-Levels, and combined them with the one useful skill I learnt at uni, fruit-machine mastery. Well, I got a B for it, so who cares, eh?

Anyway, that just went on and on, didn't it? So, with no particularly useful skills, I find myself not applying to a lot of jobs other computing graduates who learnt more relevant things are jumping on, like Java programming, or even C++. I must stress again that I could easily learn these things, it’s just that I couldn't prove I could do them. "I spent two years programming in C++ at uni, and got a B+ average in those modules." carries a little more weight than "I learnt C++ last week in the evenings, I got to chapter 39".

Back to my preposterous claim that I am less employable by agencies now: Previously, when I would go to an agency, I would explain my situation of needing money and being at uni and would they say 'grab a mop and get to thee old-folks home!'. Now, when I explain that I am a graduate they adopted this snooty face and say 'We cannot help you, sorry. Please leave' They then throw a pamphlet at you which explains why you should go away and recommends their competitors, who incidentally do roughly the same thing.

Current Mood: blah

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Jan. 28th, 2004

Jan. 8th, 2004

Jan. 3rd, 2004

Dec. 31st, 2003

Dec. 30th, 2003

Dec. 28th, 2003

11:56 pm - My Christmas.... is done.

Well, Christmas came and went without causing too much off a fuss. I have taken back me own room for the Grandmotherly person who had captured it while I wasn't looking. Turkey no more haunts my plate, and Merryness has given way to illness as a tide of cold/flue has swept the south coast of England.

This illness is a very common one, it sweeps through houses/friendship groups/schools/etc. But everyone experiences slightly different symptoms. Most people get some combination off sore-throat/headache/fever/aches/sleeplessness . I always get a night of horrible flu induced madness, where dreams invade my waking mind, and I see for example, floating cubes above my bed that I have to get rid off otherwise I become stupid. Completely insane things that make no sense. My friend Johnny once spent a delirious night thinking that he was a ninja. These delusions occur entirely while lying in bed, while your head throbs with pain at every heart-beat. If you have never experienced these symptoms, then consider your self fortunate.

Last night, I had a delirium night, where I thought I was a composer for The Simpsons, and all the Simpsons songs were continuously playing at maximum volume in my head, which of course made it very difficult to sleep. This lasted between about 1 and 4, at which point I regained enough sanity to pull myself from the bed, locate a nurofen, and go through to the bathroom to take it. After this, I stuck my head out of the window into the freezing night air, where it was raining heavily. Here, I managed convince my confused brain that I wasn't a composer for the simpsons, but was merely a person who badly needed sleep. After 10 minutes of freezing, I felt a lot more sane, and upon returning to bed, sleep came quickly. I slept till about midday, and feel pretty good today all things considered.

On Saturday, I went into town to pay in my various cheques I receiver for Christmas, and buy a whole buttload of stuff for myself, of varying degrees of usefulness, but nothing interesting enough to mention here, after which PK, Stuart and I, went to the pub/restaurant which has opened a very short distance away from my house, for a meal. I had a steak and ale pie which was really goddamn good. We decided to do nothing in the evening, which was useful because I had a full night of being insane to do.

Today was George's last day in Sussex, so we gathered the troops at the usual place for a last pub night with him. He is returning to Oxford for new year. Being a Sunday, the pub closed early, and we went home via an Uncle Sams for delicious burger, that hasn't poisoned me yet, but there's still time.

Here is a wierd picture I created for no reason:

Current Mood: calm

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Dec. 26th, 2003

09:33 am - Boxing Day Something

Unlike my house in Oxford where the internet is continuous and rapid, in Worthing its still 1997 and connection is provided through a box with a whole bunch of lights on, which makes an annoying screaming noise whenever you want to use it. It doesn't provide the best connection ever, infact, whenever anyone walks near the downstairs phone, it disconnects me. For some reason, whenever I connect, the other people in the house are drawn to the phone like flys to fly-porn. The act of picking up the phone causes my modem to have some sort of seizure, and makes a dissatisfied 'Clunk' noise, indicating that it got scared and disconnected. The person downstairs is also scared by the weird static noise coming from the phone, and runs off. So I reconnect, only to be disconnected again 2 minutes later when they repeat the act 'seeing if I’m still online'. I've tried to explain to them that they can use the phone if they want right now, just tell me when you've finished, but they always say 'no, you continue. I'll try again in a few minutes' GRRRrrrr. So anyway, at the moment I can only really go online really late at night, and then only for a short time because modems like disconnecting me randomly anyway, and it just gets annoying.

Anyway, enough complaining, this should be my Christmas related update, so make with the Merry!

I can't remember what I did on Tuesday. The entire day is gone from my head. I think I was probably abducted by aliens or something. Wednesday was Christmas Eve, and also the day my Futurama Season 4 box-set came, which I spent a while enjoying. It represents a present from myself to myself, incase no-one got me anything I actually wanted which happens sometimes. In the evening, PK, Stuart and I went to Becky's house for out traditional party-gatecrashing. We went uninvited 3 years ago, and were so impressed by the spiced-cider and foods that we've made a tradition out of it. After we got bored with that, we drove into town to drink in the new, err, Christmas. Pubs feel the need to do weird things on Christmas Eve, for example, stay open longer, and charge people to get in. So obviously, we searched for free/cheap pubs.

The first was 'The Light Bar', which was being raided by police when we got there. It is the usual hang-out for underage townies, but with them all dragged down the police station, it was quite pleasant there. It was only £1.50 per drink, though the music was about 3 times to loud, making conversation impossible. A short while later we ventured on up to 'Lush', the club at the end of Worthing pier, a pier famous for not having collapsed and burnt down, unlike certain other piers. Lush was free to get in, hence all the going to it we did. But, they had thought of a way to get their money back. It seemed that whenever you bought a drink, you also automatically bought a £1.25 token for a free VK drink sometime in January. This offer is the biggest rip-off I've ever seen:

-You have to buy it, or there’s a 50p surcharge per drink you're buying.
-The voucher is worth £4, but is only redeemable against one drink, maximum price for which is about £2.50, no change will be given.
-Only one voucher can be redeemed per visit.
-Only redeemable on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
-Not valid on Gala nights (indistinguishable from other nights)
-Other evil conditions.

So you're forced to pay tons for basically unredeemable vouchers. We left, and while leaving told everyone coming in not to bother because its a scam. We even told the bouncers who looked displeased with our efforts. We ended up in Yates's which was free, cheap, not a scam, and open till midnight. Their Christmas friendly policy was very half-arsed. The moment midnight came they basically said 'Merry Christmas, now FUCK OFF RIGHT NOW', meaning that a lot of people were forced to leave before finishing their pints. Anyway, I'd had enough and didn't want to be too hung-over for Christmas.

At Christmas, my Granny always comes to visit. When we moved into the house, I got the biggest room, under the condition that any guests stay in the spare bed in my room. This would be fine if we had nubile-girl type guests, but when its an old lady who snores in the 120db range, you'll forgive me If I have developed a Merry Yuletide tradition of sleeping in the lounge. I have learnt to close the doors to the lounge, otherwise the cat like to come in and hit my face with his paws until I feed him.

Christmas day finally arrived, and this was the real deal, not one of those fake Christmas's I had earlier in the month. Presents were duly exchanged, which was quite profitable. I got about £130 which is always nice, and one that stands out is my brothers gift of this



Uh, thats the DVD boxset of The Simpsons season 3! That should keep me going for a while. Lunch occurred afterwards, which was a great success. Mum cooked Turkey as ever. I drank a big load of red wine, which made me very sleepy. In the afternoon I spent a while setting up the DVD player that I had given mum, and finally got TV, VCR, DVD, and Cable unit connected together in a way that works, but really shouldn't work, but never mind! I then fell asleep for a while, and other things happened. Probably involving Simpsons watching, eating and drinking. All in all, not a bad Christmas. Last one I'll have at this house, unless mum's lame plan fails.

After another night of lounge-sleeping-in, it is now Boxing Day! This day made more sense when people traditionally placed gifts they had bought each other in boxes, and then gave them to each other in a ritualistic fashion. But over the years I guess people got impatient, and started doing that on Christmas Day instead. Some really impatient families do that on Christmas Eve even, or so I hear. So with the lack of any boxing to do, and the true meaning of Christmas long forgotten, Boxing day is reduced to 'that day after Christmas, where you wait for all your annoying relatives to get bored and go home', which is what it has always meant to me.

Current Mood: indifferent

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Dec. 23rd, 2003

Dec. 19th, 2003

02:03 am - Reviewing Madness

Over the last month of so, I spent a lot of time reading/watching/playing, and have decided that I should tell people what I thought of the things that I read/watched/played, hence the first in an irregular series of review orientated updates.

Now remember, these are the things that I have done, and seeing as how I did them, they obviously uniquely appealed to me, and as such will probably not appeal to you. (This is a poorly worded disclaimer for the possible boring nature of this update, hence the irregular part).

Confusing sentences aside, BEGIN

TV

24

This is an American TV series by Fox that has become really popular recently. I have watched both the first two seasons, and seen all of the third season that has been released so far. The story revolves around Jack Bauer, the head of the LA branch of the CTU (Counter-Terrorist Unit), a fictional branch of the American government charged with the fight against International Terrorism. A very patriotic promise to be sure, but the series has a few tricks up its sleeve. First is the fact that the show is in 'real-time', and by that they mean that time passes on the show at the same speed as you watch it. Say someone has to drive across town, they won't get there till 20 minutes later in the show. The purpose of this is to add suspense, and it works really well.

The other gimmick is that each series is one hour of a day, the whole series being one day. This causes a few problems though. The most important of which is because dramatic events always happen at the end of an episode, so when you look at the day, really amazing, violent, or terrible things always happen at five-minutes to the hour. I'm not sure about you, but If I were Jack I would really start to get suspicious after 12 hours of it.

The best thing about 24 is Jack himself. He is totally crazy, and shoots multiple people in every episode. He is positively psychotic at times, and is forever running around with pistols, and sometimes machine-guns, dispensing hot-leaded justice to all who oppose him. Unfortunately 24 would loose all impact if you just watched a random episode, I feel that to really get it you must watch it in order from the beginning. This represents a level of commitment that most people are unwilling to commit to, but I can assure you that it is well worth your effort.

The Simpsons

Everyone knows the Simpsons, so I won't bore you with a synopsis. Recently the show has entered its 15th season, which while amazing, is also sickening. Really, the show should have been cancelled years ago. The writers have admitted in the last few years that they have been deliberately writing stupid non-sensical episodes in the hopes that people would stop watching, and it would finally get cancelled. Unfortunately this resulted in the far superior Futurama being cancelled, so they could concentrate on The Simpsons. All the episodes so far this season have been at the best unfunny, and at the worst offensively bad. Its just really depressing to see what has become of a once great show.

Games

Call of Duty

A World War II based FPS (first person shooter) game by Infinity Ward. This game is a lot like the acclaimed 'Medal of Honor' series, and was infact developed by a load of people who split off from one of the MoH projects. It basically tried to recreate the incredible confusion of war. Whereas MoH would have you wandering around burnt out houses with Nazis jumping out at you, and you getting sniped by almost invisible opponents, CoD has a much more hectic environment.
In one level you are standing in a huge empty field with a load of French houses at one end. You place a a radio-beacon on the ground an activate it. Then nothing happens. You stare at the trees as they wave in the wind for about half a minute, and then in the distance you hear some sounds. The distant sound of jet-engines. Moments later, the sky is full of allied planes dropping para-troopers, while other bomb nearby fields. Hundred of soldiers fall into the field, FLAK fire is seen in the distance aimed at your allied planes, enemy planes begin arriving downing planes above your head, which in turn smash into the field and surroundings. After meeting up with some people from your squad, you being advancing through the village, on the way to a town a few miles a way that you are charged with securing. The whole time explosions, planes, bombs, para-troopers, fires are occurring all around you. Very engrossing stuff.

There are three main sections, the American invasion of Normandy, a British campaign in central France, and lastly the Russian retaking of Stalingrad from the Germans. Each section is insanely hectic and detailed. The game is rather short though, but it will still take you about 8 hours to complete. Very much worth your time.

XIII

Another FPS, but this time with a different style. This game uses the latest craze, cell-shading! That is, making 3d graphics look like 2d graphics. Basically this comes down to not using any lighting, giving everything flat shades, and all characters and objects bold-black outlines. The result is a very interestingly styled game, which uses multiple panels on the screen at once showing you various things. The whole story unfold like this. Unfortunately the game underneath is not really that good.

Its basically a half-arsed stealth game, which means that you can fail missions if people sound alarms, which due to dodgy AI, can happen through no fault of your own. Even the pure-action levels aren’t really that fun, because being a stealth type game, your guy is as weak as a kitten. While the enemies can easily soak up 40 bullets from a M4A1 Carbine, your guy can barely get off a table without breaking his legs.

Another slightly humorous thing about the game is that the main character is voice by David 'Mulder' Duchovney. This means that it isn't anyone talking in a dull monotone, its a trained professional. After I realised this, I did find amusement in the face that the bizarre 'Huuurngh' noise all computer game characters make when they jump is David doing the noise but somehow managing to sound bored at the same time.

The plot is a confusing and ill-defined mish-mash of conspiracies and assassinations. Your character has many flash-backs in black-and-white, where faceless people say vaguely threatening things. The game reaches a climax when it turns out someone you trusted is infact evil (OMG), and you fight him amongst some nuclear missiles that he probably intends to launch at someone or other. For some reason, he can take about 200 times more bullets that the other humans in the game, this is because he is the boss and is therefore magic. After being defeated, you celebrate with your friends on a boat, until they turn out to be evil too, and it end on a 'too be continued' screen. Very disappointing. I don't want to play through another crappy game just to find out what happened in a plot that was so confusingly presented I don't think even the authors were quite sure what they hell they were going on about, much like me.

So anyway, don't play XIII.

Homeworld 2

Ah, Homeworld. One of the greatest games ever. The sequel is not the greatest game ever, because they messed it up quite frankly.

To start with, plot comparison. The first game had a beautifully epic and sad plot, which was both simple and elegant. The second is a horrible mess of plot-devices, contrived nonsense, and incoherent rubbish. In the first game, your people lived on the desert world of Kharak. They had build a large civilisation. One day, under the desert they discovered the ruins of a great star-ship, thereby proving that they have come to the planet from another. The ship had a map which pointed to a planet on the other side of the galaxy. With this knowledge, the entire planet came together to research and build a ship advanced enough to make the long trip back to where they came. They ship is constructed over many hundreds of years, and hyper-space technology is developed to move it quickly around space.

The mothership is launched, and the hyper-space tested. It is successful. While it is away, it receives a distress-call from the homeworld. Quickly they return, to find a large fleet of alien vessels in the process of wiping out their civilisation. They quickly get surviving ships docked, and head off it the stars while their homeworld is burnt to dust. Their plan, find their previous homeworld, and destroy those responsible for the burning of Kharak. It turns out they broke a ten-thousand year old treaty forbidding the development of hyper-space technology. Each mission is sort of episodic, and details the survivors journey across the galaxy. They get stuck in a nebula full of religious nuts, investigate ship-graveyards, meet benevolent highly advanced aliens, fight huge battles with the evil Taidan Empire, and investigate ten-lightyear long wrecks floating in the galactic core.

Thats the first game. The second game's writers don't seem to have played the first game at all. They seem to have misinterpreted things that happened, and make up a load of nonsense. For some reason there are now 'three hyper-space cores' that once united will open the way to the 'eye of Arran' or something. A terrible new warlord is trying to do the same thing, and you have to stop him. It doesn't make any sense.

The game's difficulty has been ramped up to incredible new levels of difficulty. You have to mine resources in order to build up your fleet. In level 4, you use every piece of resource available to you so far and get what you think is a mighty fleet of 30 frigates or so. Well, I hope you like being attacked by about 200 hundred equally powered enemy vessels from every angle, and get replaced the moment your done killing them.

They've also messed up the interface. The first game didn't really have an interface, it was all mouse controls, and you used key-board or a right-click menu. Now there is a huge ugly blue button bar at the bottom of the screen that you have to use. They also took out the ability to put ships in formations, which was essential to the process.

So basically, they took a master-piece of a game, and did everything in their power to make it worse.

Deus Ex: Invisible War

This is the sequel to Deus Ex, a game by Ion Storm. It detailed a dark conspiracy laden world, where you were a secret government experiment. A man who had been 'augmented' so he had super-human powers. He, JC Denton, is a elite agent for UNATCO, a counter-terrorism organisation for the USA (how original). In the world of Deus Ex, every type of conspiracy exists, cover-ups, super viruses, corrupt governments, secret societies, black helicopters, greys, Area 51. In other words, a conspiracy-theory nuts dream come true.

The whole game is wrapped up in a brilliant plot as JC tries to work out precisely who is using him, and what their purpose is. He eventually is put in a position whereby he gets to decide if he wants to destroy modern society, become a God, or join a secret ruling society and rule the world from the shadows.

The sequel assumes all three things occurred. This was the first sign of trouble. The next sign came when I heard that it was being 'co-developed' for the X-Box. Console games and PC games are really different for a lot of reasons. With a Console, you play it in your lounge, while sitting in your sofa, with a control pad, getting distracted by cats and kids. A PC games is played with mouse-keyboard in darkened office about a meter away from the screen. Traditionally these reasons have resulted in different games. Console games are 'dumb', simple games presented in huge simple interfaces, that kids can play. PC games are complicated and require a lot of thought and concentrating. Deus Ex (original) was very much a PC game, meaning that there was a good mouse-interface, complicated pages of stats, the ability to use in-game computers/security/ATM machines, all sorts of cool detail. I knew all this would go in an x-box developed game, and I was correct.

Im pretty sure they developed it entirely for the x-box, then ticked the 'compile for PC' tick-box, and released whatever came out of that. The font is huge, the interface doesn't work with the mouse (arrow keys and enter button), the graphics are blurry, the HUD gets in the way, and many of the detailed game mechanics are gone. For some reason, the developer though it would be a really neat idea if the HUD looked like it was being projected onto your eyeball, and it is therefore big and oval. Unfortunately, it isn't being projected onto your eyeball, it is rather being displayed on a rectangular screen and therefore looks awful.

Lock-picks have been removed, because people don't use locks anymore in the future, they use hack-able keypads, that you use disposable hacking sticks to get through. Getting money from an ATM no longer involves searching for people account and PIN, but rather clicking Hack, and waiting for a progress bar too move, then it says 'GOT 234 BUCKS!'. For some reason, the developers though that having multiple different types of ammo was stupid, so instead of collecting darts/bullets/fuel/rockets, you no collect clips. What a brilliant idea. Somehow, my pistol, crossbow, rocket-launcher and flame-thrower all use the same ammo... Great! Now, when I run out of ammo for the machine-gun I switch to.. OH WAIT THEY ARE ALL OUT OF AMMO HOW BRILLIANT. Eh? What they fuck were they thinking? It doesn't make sense from a game design stand-point or a common-sense stand-point. Lets just say that you'll be stabbing a lot of huge robots ineffectually with a kitchen knife.

Plot wise, they determined that JC became a god, plunged the world into chaos, then joined the illuminati. This doesn't make much sense but okay. You play Alex D (what does that D stand for guys? What a mystery!!!!) Another modified agents (no longer called augmented, but modified!), who solves another load of conspiracies, eventually changing the face of the planet. Its all good and such, its not a patch on the original of course.

The levels use to be large and fun to explore, now they are cramped and annoyingly small. At some points you are running between 5 different maps, each taking 30 seconds to load, and the game for some reason changes resolution 3 times each time a new map loads. This gets irritating. The graphics are pretty good, and much fun can be had with the physics. Throwing corpses at people has never been so much fun.

The endings are pretty fun. I will go through them now so...

*SPOILERS*




1) Help your insane pal JC release nanites into the atmosphere, modifying everyone so that an AI can run the world. Everyone opinion is taken into account, and the earth is a one.
2) Help the Illuminati regain control of everything, ruling in a big-brother like state.
3) Let religious nuts kill everyone with bio-mods, and return the earth to a stone-age of technophobia, and prejudice.
4) Kill the Illumanti, JC, the Templars, and let everyone sort it out for themselves. This results in a group called the Omar coming out on top. These are a group of people who have bio-modded there bodies a way, and are basically cyborgs. They are the sole survivors of the wars, and the future of humanity.



*END SPOILERS*

So, the game is a mixed bag.



I can't be bothered to do any more now, its really late. I might do more review tomorrow.

Current Mood: sleepy

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12:54 am - Philosophers Not Welcome

Unlike my good friends, I am not a philosopher. I am hardly the worlds greatest thinker, and am unlikely to spend much time pondering things of an existential nature (I believe life has no meaning, which I really, really like. If it had meaning then I might have to rethink my 'flexible ethics' policy). Instead, I will talk about things randomly as they occur to me.

I am now writing this at 01:09am. This means that for me, it is now tomorrow. This does not however make much sense. If I were talking to someone who I was going to meet up at in the evening, I would most likely say to them 'see you tomorrow', by which technically would mean Saturday. But by Saturday I would have gone to sleep twice, therefore being two days away. I can only therefore conclude that 'midnight' occurs much to early in the day. I would propose that we move this 'midnight' to about 5am, which I have quickly calculated is the point at which on average I have roughly equal amounts of sleep to do on either side of it, thereby qualifying midnight. If anyone has any objects to this, when it is implemented by me, the Grand Emperor of Earth, then they are free to express them in the 'freedom-of-speech' area positioned conveniently above the 'trapdoor o fun'™.

This is the last Christmas I shall spend in Worthing ever. This is not through any kind of choice, no, this is because my mother in all her wisdom has gone COMPLETELY INSANE. After making a few completely un-justifiable proffesional choices, she has now decided that moving to York with her aged mother is the best idea ever. Now mum has lived in the south for roughly 20 years now, has a butt-load of friends, and has no problems with anything. Granny Margaret (her mother) has lived here for about the same amount of time, and has a whole village load of friends, with tonnes of societies and various old-woman type groups that she loves attending. There is no reason either of these people should want to leave there perfectly good living envoroments.

So, after uni, they will sell both their houses and by a single house in or around the mostly flooded city of York. So, I will be unable to come down to Sussex without staying at a friends place, or in a hotel. This will be incovenient for when I want to visit any of my A-Level perious friends, or visit my father. Oh well, I guess its pretty selfish for me to expect her to stay here if she is unhappy and wants out, its just that there appears to be no motivation whatsoever. GRrrr.

The intended time of removal if about the time I finish my degree. At that time I will hopefully be read to move somewhere else, in order to go to some kind of job. Which I will be doing until the year 2012 when most of the population of Earth will be wiped out in some kind of horrible disaster. I, of course, will survive this disaster, and spend my remaining years roaming the post-apocalyptic wasteland of England, fighting over water with the other survivors, and driving around of funny looking bikes.

Yep.

Current Mood: calm

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Dec. 17th, 2003

06:27 pm - Extreme Laziness

Its Lord of the Rings day today, and amazingly I am NOT seeing it today, nor do I have any plans to see it in the upcoming days. This is not because I have no desire to see the film, it is however because I have no desire to go and see the film by myself. Everyone I could go with is working during the days at the moment, and its too late to book tickets to any of the evening showings in the next few days. Oh well. I don't even care about spoilers, because I have already read the books.

Over the last couple of days of have willfully, knowingly, and maliciously done nothing at all, with intent to harm, and traumatise. Among the things I have done lies going to the pub twice, and making a standard Roast Chicken meal for my mum. The latter was a challenge because I was using non-standard equipment, like an ELECETRIC OVEN! This oven is much like its gas counterpart, except for the fact that it takes a seven billion years to warm up. The meal was quite successful actually.

On monday night, we went to the Vintner's Parrot, otherwise known as the best pub in Worthing. Fellow pub-goers included Pk, Stuart, Will and Kim. The parrot was almost empty, which didn't matter much as it only made getting drinks a quicker proccess. Me and Stuart did some gambling, which wasn't entirely successful (I'm Sorry Rachel! )

On the way home from the pub I notices that a big load of old farm type buildings that exist on the side of a road near my house were all lit up, and I said "Hey, Why are those load of farm type building all lit up?", "Because they are a pub now" came the reply. I though about this for a few seconds and eventually, a plan began to form. A plan so fiendish and amazingly brilliant that I was astounded that I had even begun to be able to contemplate half of it. "What...." I asked carefully ".. if we go there....tomorrow?"

Pk, Stuart, Lynn and I were the only ones interested in this new-pub scouting mission, which was fine. I can't expect people to go to the pub every evening, now can I? Seeing as how close it was I though I would walk there. Brilliant plan. It was fucking freezing. I walked up to what I though was the front door, and was amazed to find that it was neither the front, not was it a door. 'Back Window' would be a much more accurate desription. Even though I was standing less than a metre away from a couple drinking beer at a table, I was completely unable to enter. I walked round the side, and saw in the distance across a dark field, some headlights winding their way across it, and eventually behind the pub. "You've got to be fucking kidding me!" I exclaimed, much to the ammusement of the drinking-couple mentioned earlier. So, off I stomped, I would estimate over half-a-mile of wandering down a pitch-black road, and across a windy field, in order to get to the place. Next time I'm gonna ask mum for a bloody lift.

"Where," I proclaimed "are the FRUIT MACHINES!?". This was not a pub type pub, it was however a 'country pub/resteraunt' type pub, which meant no gambling apparently. So I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't waste all my money in a flashing, beeping machine. This was probably a good thing I now realise, but I now consider fruit-machines to be an integral part of the pubbing experience. Conversation was had instead of money-losing, which was okay, I suppose. I got to watch Lynn who was already pre-drunk, descend further and further into the state of being completely wasted. She was drowning her sorrows about a certain relationship related problem which I won't go into detail about here, because thats just rude. Anyway, when PK and stuart were at the bar, she told me all about the situation, but under the condition 'Don't tell anyone, especially Will!'. I agreed.

Half-an-hour later, she told Stuart and PK. An hour later she was telling the bar-staff. On the way home she commented 'Well I guess everyone knows now, because I told Kim, James, and Helen the other day. The only person who doesn't know now is George'. George sounded pretty amused to hear the story moments later, as he probably hadn't heard from Lynn in over a year. Never mind, no harm done, at least Will doesn't know.

...So Ian..., you are probably wondering, What did you do...during...the..day?

Same thing as plan to do tomorrow.

Current Mood: apathetic

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Dec. 15th, 2003

Dec. 13th, 2003

03:23 pm - The end of retail, and the lack of sleep.

Lack of Sleep

On Thursday, I complained that I hadn't gotten much sleep due to toothache and headache keeping me awake. I would estimate that I got about 3 hours of sleep that night. In the evening George invited me around for foods (an excellent Chicken in Red wine sauce thing, by Karis), and stuff watching. We watched some old Mike Myers film 'I married an Axe Murder', which contained a disappointingly small amount of axe murder, as in, none at all. Stupid false advertising. George has recently been watching 'Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu', which is a very weird anime (as if there are non-weird animes), and we watched a couple episodes of that.

I went home about 1am, which is always a problem because me and George live down Cowley Road from each other, so I am often to be found walking around there at very late hours. Now Cowley Road is by no means the most dangerous place on earth, but that isn't to say that people don't get stabbed around there a lot. At night, transversing the road is an exercise in not making eye-contact, or even not being seen altogether. Well, I haven't died yet, which is a good thing I think.

Upon getting home, I wasn't the least bit tired. This isn't normally a problem, but I had to go to work for 9:15 the next day, which meant that I would almost certainly not be able to get a full 8 hours of sleep before going to work. Oh well. I read stuff online for a while, until I had a really bad idea, I would play 'Deus Ex: Invisible War' for a while, seeing as how I had been reading about it. Next thing I knew it was 4:30, which wasn't an improvement on the earlier time. Shit, better get to sleep, I thought. Now was the time for the tooth-ache thing to start up again, and was completely unable to get to sleep. By 8:00, I still don't think I had gotten more than half-an-hour of disturbed sleep. Never mind, time to go to work!

A more sensible plan would have been to call in sick, but it being the last day on the job, I felt it was my duty to go in, or something. I think I yawned continuously for the next 2 hours, because everyone commented on how tired I looked. I became a bit more awake afterwards, though in my confused state I decided that I was only pretending to be awake, and it was all some sort of elaborate ruse. I wonder how many people I gave the correct amount of change to during the shift.

Finally, 1 o’clock came, and I said my goodbyes. It would appear there are precisely zero administrative type tasks to do when you quit, which is good, because I probably wouldn't have done them very well. I'm not intending to go back to work there, though I will probably change my mind when I run out of money. I will go on about work in at the end of this update.

Upon getting home, you would hope that I would goto sleep or something. But oh no, I wasn't falling for that old trick. You see, if I had gone to sleep then, then I would have woken up at about midnight, feeling really awake and ready to go about a days useful activities, but OH NO! ITS NIGHT TIME NOW! Thereby completely ruining my sleep-cycle forever(!). So, I plotted to stay awake as long as was physically possible, and managed to continuously not fall asleep until about 11.30, when I finally gave in. I can't remember what I did for most of that time, though I am thankful I didn't update this journal, amusing though that may have been. I remember reading forums a lot, speaking to people on the phone, though I know not what I said. I also made one of James's standard roast-dinners, with Ian's standard broccoli extras. I also, remember only eating about one-third of it, before abandoning it for some reason. The last time I was that tired, I remember experiencing both auditory and visual hallucinations, those didn't happen this time though.

I slept for about 11 hours and feel fine today, and my sleep cycle is safe YAY!
Well, with everything caught up, I will finally start going on about Retail work.

End of retail

Warning, this whole section will probably be really boring.

I would encourage anyone who is considering applying for a job in their local food-selling type place, to pick up their monitor, and hit their head with it until they change their minds. I do realise that I have only worked for one store in one chain, but that gives me no problems with applying my experiences to the industry as a whole, because I enjoy generalising.

A guess some of the problem might have been with the face that I was working at somerfield. They are the fifth biggest superstore company in Britain. This isn't a particularly good thing. #1 Tescos is top because they are everywhere, and there products are great and cheap. #2 Sainsbury's is where you go if you want really high quality foods at more expensive prices. #3 is Morrisons which is some filthy northern store that I've never heard off. #4 is Asda, which is where you go if you want slightly dubious products at rock-bottom prices, and annoying people patting their back pocket. So, Somerfield is where you go when you want what? I dunno. I can think of no defining thing about it, except that our prices are high, and our customer service is dubious at best.

Somerfield who was previously Gateway, merged with Kwik Save a while back. Kwik-Save are our budget stores now, that is, stores manned by weird troll-like creatures that sell products that can be only be described as 'disturbingly sticky'. You may find a bargin in there, but you'd be lucky seeing as they don't believe in 'displaying' there products, rather they throw them all in big pile of boxes, and let the customers go nuts (sometimes literally). If you find a good bargin, you may find that you don't really want to touch it on account of it being covered in something horrible. When you see the queues for the checkout, and the person on the checkout, you may well abandon your basket and run quickly out the front door.

But, this isn't about Kwik Save, because I've never worked there! At somerfield I was a checkout guy. Not a very taxing job, which consists of throwing stuff over bar-code reading lasers until you hear an annoying beeping sound. Better get used to that sound. Also, when you're bored, you can stare at the lasers, they are all sparkly! If you are really bored, and you will be, you can try and press on you scale, and try and keep it at 1KG, until your arm start hurting. In other stores, they use futuristic tills with touch-screens and nice graphical interfaces. At somerfield we had an old control panel connected to a two-line LCD display that said thing like 'MR003 M'ment Key Rq M', which was never very helpful. You never get trained on the tills, you just get to watch someone else doing it for half-an-hour, and then you get to try because they assume that you now know everything you need to know in order to do the job. This means that in the first two weeks you have to get help about four thousand times.

If you can cope with the boredom, the weird tills, and the unhelpful management, then you still have to cope with the customers. I wasn't prepared for how hostile 90% of people are. People love yelling at other people when the other person can't yell back. Often when being yelled at, they are blaming you for things you have no control over, things other people did wrong, things they did wrong, because they are completely insane, and sometimes because you gave them 50 pounds cash-back when they only wanted 15 (I do ask people to 'check the amount and initial beside it').

I will yell at you, unrelated person!
Once someone came over to the kiosk and started shouting at me, saying that I should do something about the things happened here or something. It turned out that she had asked for £20 cash-back, and then the person had forgotten to give them it, and the lady had forgotten to ask for it until a few seconds later, where-upon she asked for it, and a supervisor came over and opened the till and got it. Not that big a deal, but big enough of a deal for her to yell at me, a completely unrelated person, for five whole minutes. Ah memories, memories.

Smoke yourself incoherent
The cigarette kiosk is another load of fun because it also involves dispensing countless varieties of cigarettes/cigars/tabaco/lightes/papers/alcohol, and also making staff-announcements and answering the phone. Smokers often have their own weird way of describing what they want, but by this time their throat has been so destroyed that they are left unable to say anything without dissolving into a coughing fit. So Im standing there being coughed at, with the person wildly gesticulating in the general direction of over 200 types of cigarettes.

Incomprehensible old/foreign people
These people often just want something simple, but are completely unable to communicate at all. 'HErershpl yanthy ert Speshpppllok??' 'Huh??' 'Herrsshlp yarthy yer Seplpohshhh???' 'Huh??' etc. These exchanges can go on for ages.

I AM A FARMER
There’s a guy who comes in almost every day with the sole mission of telling as many people that he's a farmer as he physically can. Sometimes he says 'Out of my way, just combining may way though!', or 'Here's some of me old farmer money, it might be covered in manure!', or 'I have to get up early in the morning to milk cows!'. In other words, he's really annoying. Yesterday he started screeching loudly for no apparent reason. Just for variety he sometimes says things that really offend people in the middle of his otherwise farming-orientated babbling. He likes talking about Nazi's then getting into loud arguments about things with people, thereby informing more people that he's a farmer.

I was gang-raped!
Another crazy guy who used to come in almost every day. He looked about 25, with shaven head and dark-glasses. His gimmick was muttering really unpleasant things to people, and throwing items around really violently. He is often found standing in a queue next to a really terrified looking girl, mumbling things about gang-rape, prison, experiments, torture, being beaten up, etc.

Shut up Ian!

Enough random memories! This must be totally boring. Anyway, I'm glad its finally over. Tomorrow, my mum is coming with the car to transport me back to Worthing, which should be fun I guess. At worthing, I usually somehow end up going to the pub every evening, which is fun, so you may get some drunk-entries soon. Yay!

Current Mood: content

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Dec. 11th, 2003

Dec. 9th, 2003

02:56 am - Oh yeah, I have a livejournal

Gah, I'm really bad at doing this every day, as you can see. A lot has happened, so I'll try and get though it all.

On Thursday, the Reading thing happened. In order for me to be able to come, I told work (somerfield) that I had an exam on that day, which was accepted as an excuse. yay! We went by car, and I firsthand witnessed the awe and majesty that is the Oracle shopping centre thing! Instead of a boring smelly street, the lucky people of Reading have an immense modernly designed shopping-topia of some sort. A finely sculpted river runs through it, and everything has a unnescessarily elaborate design. A large prism-thing looms over the mall, looking though it might fire lasers at us, at any moment.



But maybe thats just me. Anyway, Shopping was done by all. The final line up for people who came with me was James and Nikki, of course, and George and Tom. Rachel couldn't make it on account of being in some sort of lecture thing. I didn't buy much, because I couldn't bring myself to buy any christmas presents, its just too early! I bought myself some games, from the list of games that I have previously bought, then the disc stopped working. I'll try and keep them in better condition this time, rather than in a puddle of coffee under my monitor, or whatever the hell happened to the old discs.

After shopping, and laser avoiding, we tried to determine the location of the Toby Carvery that was the whole point of the trip. Unfortunately, James didn't no the precise directions, and it was rush hour, meanning that attempting to 'drive around till we see it' takes bloody ages. But, even with the odds stacked against us, we found it, and then we ate. Oh, how we ate! Well, oh how I ate anyway. Me and James ate as if there were unlimited Yorkshire and Vegetables, which there were. Tom ate until he felt sick for hours, and George and Nikki ate with some sort of crazy reserve. The toby was not unlike the one back in worthing.



The rest of the day was uneventful. On Friday at went to work, came home, and the Christmas occured. I know I mentioned it occuring on Wednesday, but then It only really referred to the meal. The whole day on Friday seemed Christmasy. I got home at about 1:30, with a £37.49 DVD player in tow. People on the street kept staring at it longingly. I was half-expecting to be attacked my a mob or something. When I got home, the Turkey was nearing readiness. The vegetables were being cooked later. The whole thing came together at about 3.30 when the food was server. I ate just as well as I did at the carvery, and the food was just as majestic, if not better in some areas (Go Nikki!) Rachel had arrived at some point. After this the drinking of much wine started.

Last year, during a 3 for £5 offer on Canti Rosso in Tescos, me and George discovered that it is the best wine ever, resulting in his house having about 20 finished bottles of it lying all over the place at one point. Well, the same sort of thing happened hear. 'Its the best wine ever' I casually ventured to Rachel as she warily took a sip of it. About an hour later she went round for another bottle, and later commanded James to get two more bottles of it from Tescos. Various card games happened, including Whist and Sevens, and the some trivial pursuit as well. Also we watched some festive Invader Zim. I think I had more fun that I will do on real Christmas. We drank 5 bottles between the 4 of us, resulting in Nikki becoming quite drunk. Well, more drunk than I had seen her before. James continued with his position of not drinking wine, which is unfortunate because there is someone with a clear memory of the whole occassion. Dammit.

The next day was Saturday, and was really really boring. I woke up about half and hour before I had to be at work, so I went to work, and did work, and then came home from work, work, work, work. It must have been the slowest shift ever. I didn't even get shouted at by anyone. Oh well, just two more days of it till quitting time.



On Sunday, everyone left! Well, David, James, and Nikki did anyway, in some order. This left me with the prospect of an empty house. This meant a few things; I may go insane from isolation, I have the whole internet connection to my self, I have 4 days of nothing to do. I am currently on my second day of nothing, and I really haven't accomplished anything! Well anything of any importance anyway.

I completed Thief 2, which is still an excellent game. I'm not really sure why I did that seeing as how I've got a bunch of other new games I havent played yet, and I've played through Thief 2 like 10 times already. Oh well. It wouldn't be doing nothing, If I actually did something would it? Tomorrow I may see if George wants to do anything. Dammit, its already 4am. I shouldn't have wasted all that time looking for pitctures, then putting lasers on them. Oh well, I know for next time anyway.

Current Mood: sleepy

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Dec. 4th, 2003

02:49 am - Merry Festiveness, and Happy Jolly to all!

Yeah, it would appear to be Christmas now. I could tell because today I ate turkey with stuffing and roast vegetables, while surrounded by presents, crackers, and festive christmas music. The only problem is that its still only the 3rd of December dammit. This ridiculously early Christmas is mainly due to the fact that everyone goes home on Saturday, and this is the only chance to do some kind of post-exam celebration with everyone from uni, and what better way to do it than with a Christmas dinner?

Earlier today I did an exam on Human-Computer Interfaces. It was roughly as easy as I predicted, but there are some slightly tricky aspects to the subject that caught me off guard. This isn't to say its a hard subject by any means, it just means that someone has taken a field in which there is really very little to do, and made what is there sound ridiculously complicated, and making pointless formulas that don't do anything that 30 seconds of experimentation wouldn't deduce. It is mearly a matter of decoding whatever stupidly long words are being used. In a subject where 'Concurrent dialogues and combinatorial explosions of state' means a simple chart showing whether text is bold italic or normal, nothing is as it seems. That is, nothing isn't a ridiculous load of words that mean 'thing'.

I just spent a few minutes fiddling with my camera and managed to get the following spooky image. But more importantly, it is a flimsy pretext to see if I can get images into this thing.

Current Mood: sleepy

Current Music: Ozma - Korobeiniki

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Dec. 3rd, 2003

02:07 am - So it begins...

Well, It would seem I now have a livejournal. Brilliant. I can now tell random people on the internet things about my life that are boring even to me. I will do my best to make it interesting, but don't get your hopes up. I do not promise to update it every day, because I'm bound to forget.

The only thing I know at the moment is that I have an exam on 'Human-Computer Interfaces' at 14:00 tomorrow, and I haven't done any revision as of yet. Normally this would concern me quite a bit, but maybe its the fact that its the easiest module I've done in ages and anyone with any common sense could easily pass it that makes me so uncaring towards the module, or maybe its because I'm drunk. Only time will tell if my confidence is justified, or, err, otherwise.

With a little luck, a three alarm clocks positioned strategically around the room, I should be able to get up in the am, and do some revision, or something. After that, my friend George and his house-mates are planning a Christmas style luncheon, which will spark off the interminable turkey-eating that always happens during December. I haven't eaten Turkey since last Christmas, as far as I can remember, not due to me not liking it, but due to the fact that I eat so damn much of it over Christmas period that it takes me 11 months to stop being sick at the thought of eating it again.

Thursday a bunch of us are off to reading for the soul purpose of eating at a carvery there. You may think this is slightly silly, and you would be correct, but that won't stop us you see because WE KNOW IT'S SILLY, ALRIGHT. On Friday, my house-mates are doing their version of Christmas lunch, which will be more turkey. And after that everyone goes back to they homes, leaving the house to me, where I will be able to do really great things like, um, play counter-strike with really low pings, and stuff. Yeah. It'll be great.

Hopefully my subsequent entries will be more coherent.

Current Mood: groggy

Current Music: Only the sweet ringing in my ears.

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