Blu-Ray Shmu-Ray

So, I finally got a shiny copy of Iron Man in the post a couple of days ago. I never got to see it at the cinema because of exams and stuff, and I didn’t want to download a crappy videocamera version of it. In the end, by the time it was finally released on DVD, I had a job, and a laptop that can play Blu-rays, so I thought why not buy the extra-special Blu-Ray edition of Iron Man.

Now this would be great, except for some reason my laptop can’t even handle playing Blu-rays. It plays, sure, but it it stutters as much as…a thing that stutters. One of these days I might think of some good metaphors. While the audio generally plays smoothly, the video is far from smooth. It plays along jerkily, and “seconds per frame” would be a more accurate measurement of the speed than “frames per second”

I’ve tried so many different things now that I’m sick of the sight of the opening Paramount logo, and AC-DC’s “Back in Black”, which plays through the first scene in Iron Man, is probably going to be circulating through my head all night.  Every time accompanied by a slow video that often grinds to a halt after 2 minutes. I did manage to get it to play at an almost acceptable speed one time, but when I realised I needed to check my emails, it slowed down back to it’s previous unwatchable speed.

I don’t know why this is. I see no reason why my computer couldn’t run a blu-ray. Sure, it’s the height of movie technology, but at the end of the day it’s just a video. A very high quality video, yeah, but that’s why it’s on a 50gb disk, I don’t see why it should take massive amounts of processing power to run. It does though, eating up over half of my CPU and memory power.

I’m wondering if this is just because the bundled software I have on my computer for playing blu-rays sucks. It doesn’t seem too great, but it’s hard to compare. Apparently the Blu-ray Disk Association, the smart people who designed the blu-ray technology, have decided that it’s a good idea to not actually tell many people how to make programs that play blu-rays. None of the standard freeware media players will play it. Not Windows Media Player, not VLC Player (which can play ANYTHING), nothing. If you want to play blu-rays you have to pay a higher price

I tried downloading a trial version of PowerDVD, one of the few programs which does support it. But no, the trial version won’t let you play blu-rays, you need to just buy the full version before you can so much as see the opening credits. The prices for the program aren’t BAD, £30 for software is certainly better than paying £300 for a blu-ray player of a PS3, but I already paid £600 for my laptop. And even though I do have a job now, I’m not willing to just drop £30 on some program that MAY or MAY NOT fix my problem. I don’t ask for much from the trial version, but why can’t it at least let you play 10 minutes of a blu-ray just to see if it will do what you need it to do?

For all I know it could just be that my computer sucks. I’ve had varied results from killing various windows processes (Vista seems to eat up a lot more CPU power than XP, no surprise. And McAfee just WON’T DIE, like some sort of digital medusa, as soon as I kill one process, 2 more pop up in it’s place. I tried downloading driver updates for my drive, but that doesn’t recognise the drive correctly and it just kills it until I restart. The disk drive manufacturers site tells me I need specific drivers from my laptop manufacturer, but they don’t have any mention of blu ray or disk drives in their driver section.

So now I’m back to the trusty old method of downloading the software off of bittorrent. While I do try to avoid pirating software these days when it usually isn’t necessary, there are some things I take exception to. Massive price tags, and software that provides no alternatives. Things like Photoshop fit into the first category, while programs like Microsoft Office do in fact offer suitable alternatives, like a student version for £40. Of course for things like that there’s always something like OpenOffice which will pretty much do the same thing for free.

But if they refuse to provide me with working blu-ray software for free, then… I’ll just get it for free anyway.

I just want to watch Iron Man. Is that too much to ask?

I’m not annoying enough to make money from it

So, I lost my job after only 2 shifts. I’m usually pretty good with jobs, my bosses have always been happy with me, and one even went out of their way to find another job for me even when they didn’t need me any more. So it was a bit of a shock to be told not to come back again after only 2 shifts.

To be honest, I was thinking that I’d start looking for something else already after just half an hour today. I knew I wouldn’t be able to put up with the job for long, but I figured I could at least bear it for a while until I found something else. But, yesterday was not my day.

I won’t miss the job, that’s for sure. I am pretty worried now about finding another. I spent most of last year looking for a job near college, I couldn’t find much. I had 2 interviews, which I thought went well until they asked about my availability, and I told them that I wouldn’t be around in the holidays. In hindsight, I should have just lied then quit when it came to the holidays.

This job as one of those jobs I swore I’d never do though. Telemarketing, outbound calls, being an annoying person who no one wants to talk to. Getting paid for being annoying doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise you have to be good at it. I, unfortunately (or fortunately maybe) am not.

A quick outline of what I had to do. I’d go through a big list of phone numbers, calling people and trying to ask them a few questions. Usually it’d go like this -

“Good evening, is this Mr/Mrs ___? Hi, I’m calling from Midas, we’re carrying out a brief holiday survey”
“Not interested”
“I’m not trying to sell anything”
*Hang up*

Of course, the bit about not trying to sell anything was a bit of a lie. In these surveys, when you eventually got someone willing to answer them, we’d ask them a bit about how often they take holidays and where they like to go, while quickly moving onto some totally unrelated and somewhat too personal questions about their marital status and income. This was just so a precursor for a second call though. If they were married, earned enough money, and liked taking holidays, someone would call them back a week later and try to sell them a holiday.

I did alright on my first day. The people who were good at it would get 20 or so successful answers out of their lists in a shift. I managed 7, which wasn’t too bad considering I spent the first hour training and filling out forms, and I was new too it.

I’m not too sure what went wrong yesterday though. It might have been bad luck with the numbers I had, not many people answered, and most of those who did were too old (one of the requirements was that they be between 25 and 65). But still, when people did answer I rarely got them to actually answer the questions. I tried various ways of wording it, and it just didn’t work out.

My boss, team leader, or whatever they called themselves, spent most of the evening listening in on new people’s phone calls and giving them some advice. For me though, they were just condescending and insulting, telling me that my results so far were pathetic but offering me little advice on how I should improve. All she did say was that I needed to sound more cheerful and like I “wanted to be there”. Well, I didn’t want to be there. Ironically, I was actually pretty cheerful at the start of the shift, since I’d been having a pretty good week up until that point. But then it was a downward spiral from there, unsuccessful calls and an insulting boss did not do much to cheer me up.

Honestly, I have no idea how the people who work there can keep up their cheerful fascades for 4 hours. There was one girl who’s calls I listened in on during training last week. I actually had to hold the phone away from my ear, her voice was so annoying. I can imagine that the people on the other end of the line just wanted to answer the questions just to get her to stop talking. Some people just have a knack for stopping them from hanging up, and manage to persuade half the people to stay on the line. I’m too nice to them though. I just go “Oh ok, sorry for wasting your time, good bye”

So in the end yesterday, I got 4 successful calls compared to the target of 20. I tried to ask for one more chance in the hope I’d be a bit better after some more sleep, but that didn’t work. They just said it’d be a waste of their time if I came back.

I really do need the money though. There’s the website stuff I’m going to do too, but I don’t know if that’s enough to save up for stuff I want. Well, back to looking for jobs I guess.

Take Two

So here we go again. I’m back in Exeter, in my new house, a week away from starting my second year at University.

Having just read James’ blog from yesterday, he’s actually said part of what I was going to say about first years on the campus, though probably in a far more interesting and gramatically clever way. Also, while he’s enjoying strutting his second year status around the silly smaller students, I’m avoiding them like the plague. I’m not really sure how, or even if, one year has really changed us from the lost and confused first years that are running around the university right now, looking for either their next class or cheapest source of alcohol. I went up there the other day to check some things online the other day (because I couldn’t live without internet for a day) and it was like a ghost town, the day before the first years arrived. But after going up there yesterday I think I’ll stay away until my classes start.

…I think maybe I’ve become more antisocial since last year then, if nothing else. I was full of an overwhelming need to fit in then, when I started university. And I guess that’s what makes me feel so far removed from those first years now. So many of them come to university trying to start a new life, pretending to be someone else. Well, I wasn’t quite like that, but for the first couple of weeks I was just trying to do stuff that wasn’t me, trying to fit in with people who I didn’t actually have anything in common with, and would realise later in the year that I didn’t particularly like.

Anyway, the point is that, antisocial or not, I just don’t care about any of that now. I’m happy with what I’ve got, I have much better friends back home than I’m going to make by going out and drinking here.  I need to actually do well at university this year, while also working 12 hours a week for this new job, doing some website stuff for James, and hopefully having some time to do what I want in there too. While the University’s suggested amount of personal study time is insane – I worked it out that they suggest you do 50 hours of personal study per week, outside of classes – I do actually need to do more than the 5 (if that) hours per week I did last year.

I’m not being entirely antisocial though. Having moved into a house with 4 other people, I can’t really shut myself in my room the whole time. It’s a bit odd actually, I lived in a flat with 2 of these people last year, and they never seemed to want to do much with me at all. Since moving in at the weekend though, they’ve been talking about all these places we could go, all the things we should do, and actually talking to me. It’s not that I ever had any disagreement or problems with them last year, but we seemed to have come to an understanding by the end of the year that they didn’t want to invite me to go anywhere with them, and I didn’t want to watch daytime TV with them. Maybe they’ve just forgotten over the course of the summer that they didn’t particularly like me, or maybe they’re just making more of an effort now that we’re stuck living together for another year. So in return, I have been trying to spend a bit more time out of my room with them. Saying that, I did sleep til 2pm today and I haven’t left the room much since other than to grab a drink. I guess I should do that soon.

We even played pictionary last night. It’s amazing the things you find to entertain yourselves when there’s no TV in the living room. So after a 2 hour long game of me drawing dogs that looked like cats, and parrots that looked like dragons, apparently me and one of the other guys now owe the 2 girls a meal or something. Apparently we’re going to play for double or nothing on wednesday, this might be a bad idea.

There is in fact a reason why I’m being particularly antisocial today though. Steph, one of the girls in the house who I’d not met for more than 5 minutes before this week, is trying to get the entire house to go to dance classes. Since she’s on some dance commitee, Emma also likes dancing, and can also get Tom to do anything she says, this makes it difficult for me to disagree. Since I seem incapable of saying that no, I really don’t want to learn to dance, I’ve been struggling to find excuses. It’s difficult to flat out say no when I am trying to be sociable with them, and it’s not like I do much else. But I really…don’t…want…to dance. Fortunately I think after this week it falls on the same evenings that I work, but I’m having trouble getting out of it today.

I’m getting hungry now though, so I don’t think I can stay in my room all day.

Jobs for Joes

So I guess I left the last blog on a cliffhanger. Not entirely intentional, mostly just because I’d already gone through the better part of 1000 words, forgot about it for a while, came back later, and just hit submit.

But yes, I’d been looking for part time jobs for when I go back to university. I was starting to lose hope after looking around Exeter, and I had come somewhat unprepared. Half of the places asked for CVs (which I hadn’t thought to print off), some wanted me to go apply online (I had no internet there), one wanted me to go online, download an application form, print it off, and bring it in the next day. Couldn’t they just GIVE me one? Oh, and then some were in fast food places. No, just no. GAME were looking for someone, but it was only 4 hours a week and chances are they’d have filled it by the time I got a chance to bring a CV down. Some bookshop wanted someone but stated that you’d have to be around in the holidays, and I’m not willing to spend all of my holidays in Exeter in an empty house.

It wasn’t looking too good really. But I did have one other possibility. I’d seen one job advertised on the university website, so I gave them a call when I was down in Exeter. I was in luck, they were doing interviews at 11am the next day! Well, not that much luck actually, since my train was booked for 12pm the next day, and there was no chance of me making that in time. Still, no problem, I could just buy another ticket.

Of course, then another problem came to mind. All I had with me to wear was a pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts. I couldn’t really go to a job interview like that. Usually I’d have given up at this point, but after seeing what else there was available (pretty much nothing) I didn’t want to mess up this one chance. The pay was pretty good too, and it looked pretty flexible for students. It does involve phoning people up, which I’m not a big fan of.. but I’d rather that than work in a supermarket (which I’ve done before, and never want to do again). I could bear it if I meant I could actually afford to spend money on nicer things than budget food.

So I went back into town again and bought myself a cheap shirt, pair of smart trousers, and tie. Then I realised that wearing trainers wouldn’t be the best idea either, so I picked up some cheap smart looking shoes too. I needed some more since I ruined my previous ones at Reading Festival anyway. Then for good measure, I decided to book myself in for a haircut the next morning. Overkill? Well, I’d find out the next day, I guess.

That night I realised that sleeping in an entirely empty house is kinda creepy, but I was so tired from the previous night anyway that it didn’t matter, and I slept through from around 9pm to 9am.

The next day answered my previous question – Yes, it was overkill. While I still wouldn’t have felt right going to an interview in jeans, t shirt, and trainers, the tie was definitely overkill. Half the people there weren’t very smart at all, and I felt a bit out of place. And it didn’t seem so much an interview as a formality, as they had me filling in Tax forms and asking when I could start within minutes. But, in the end, it doesn’t really matter much. It wasn’t worth the risk not getting it, and the extra £50 spent on clothes and an extra train ticket will be quickly made back.

Hurray, I can stop complaining about money now.

Summery Summary

So it’s been a while since I updated. Even longer than James! I have to do something about this…

I could blame my lack of updates on the fact that I was away for part of the summer. But really a) I’ve been back 2 weeks, b) I had plenty of time before that when I didn’t update, and c) I borrowed Greg’s computer enough times in the time that I was away. So I really, I have no excuse other than the fact that I’m lazy.

So let’s see, what did I do this summer?

After a short period of relaxation/boredom at my Mum’s house in Cornwall, I moved into a room in the Southampton Solent halls for 6 weeks. This was not a particularly nice place, but it was a bed, cooking/cleaning facilities, and (most importantly?) free internet. While it wasn’t particularly close to my friends, it was at least in the same area code, and I was able to get a bus or train to see them easily enough.

Unfortunately having a social life, but being a short distance from it meant that my bank balance went down rather rapidly, until it hit 0. Then it kept going down. I’ve done pretty well up to this point in managing my money. While my parents are quite generous and relatively well off, what they give me combined with my student loan does not fund any more than my rent and food. Socialising is just not covered by my budget. Fortunately, while at University, I don’t -have- much of a social life, so this isn’t a major issue, and I can always forego a meal every now and then if I have some night out planned.

So when you’re seeing a movie, going to the pub, and eating some sort of fast fast food at least once a week, as well as spending £3-5 on transport every other day, it’s a bit of a shock for my poor bank account. Of course it seems to be the theme of my blog that I talk about the bad points of a situation (happy things just don’t make good blogs I guess) I think it was money well spent. While not as eventful as my previous summer in America, I had some fun times, and it was nice to spend some time with my friends.

The big spending point of the summer was Reading Festival. Fortunately I had already paid for the £160 ticket earlier in the year, which I had funded with some short term work. For those that are either stupid or American (no, I’m not saying the 2 are the same, but most Americans I’ve spoken to think Reading Festival is something to do with books) is a 3 day music festival where you can see various popular rock bands. I could go into a whole 1000 word blog post about just this, and I intended to. However it’s a bit late for that now, as this passed over 2 weeks ago, and it’s just not cool to blog about something that long ago in the blogosphere. That, and I don’t remember half the things I wanted to say. The highlights of the weekend (for various reasons) for me would be Biffy Clyro, The Subways, The Killers, The Raconteurs, Rage against the Machine, Bloc Party, Tenacious D and Last Shadow Puppets.

Unfortunately the cost of the weekend didn’t stop at the tickets, with food and drink being about twice what you’d usually pay for it (£2 for a Coke, £3 for chips, £5 for a burger, £4 for a pint of beer/cider.. you get the picture) and I racked up about £50 on the rest of the weekend. But, considering that you’d pay £20-£50 to see any of the bands I named above individually, it’s still a bargain. I needed my fix of live music, one thing I can’t afford much these days.

So after that I spent a couple of weeks staying with various friends, which culminated in going out with a group of people for Greg’s birthday. Twice. (that reminds me, James, you owe me some amount of money still!)

When I was done there, I came back to my Mum’s house in the middle of nowhere, where I’ve been relaxing up until yesterday. As I’ve said before, it’s nice here for a short time, and the free good food is nice, but it quickly becomes boring. I’m looking forward to going back to University now actually, and perhaps another quick trip back to Southampton before then.

I did have something to do for the past 2 days at least, when I decided that it’d be a good idea to make a trip to Exeter to look around for jobs. As is easy to tell from most of my blogs, my money situation while in University has not been good. Jobs that suit students (or that are even willing to give students a chance) are rare, and at this point I’ve been pretty much willing to take anything if it means I can afford to buy anything more than cheap food. I need a laptop, I want to travel some more next year, and I’d like to be able to buy a 360 at some point, and some games for it would be good too. There’s only so much of this that I can afford through my parents savings and christmas/birthday money, so I needed a job if I wanted to be able to afford anything.

Fortunately, I found something.

If you don’t write a blog, I’ll kill your kittens

James is holding me hostage and forcing me to blog, which isn’t very nice. I value the life of my cats though!

I do in fact have quite a lot of things I’ve been meaning to blog about, but to be honest that’s fallen way down the priority list below staring blankly, in a close tie with sleeping (which I try to avoid as much as possible). It’s not that I don’t want to blog though, but I get tired of repeating myself, which I tend to do  lot on here; my 1000 word posts leave a lot of room for it too.
So, a brief summary of my past few weeks, which I may or may not expand upon later -

I’m now staying back in Southampton for the summer. I have a room in the student accommodation of one of the Universities there. James just interrupted to say that he’d like to say poop to that. In fact, so would I. The room is not the nicest room ever, that’s for sure. I guess you get what you pay for, and I’m only paying £50/week – a little over half of what I was paying for my nice en-suite room in Exeter University accommodation for the past year. The room’s pretty small with little storage space, and a fairly uncomfortable bed. There is a sink in the room, but I’m not sure that I trust it for drinking water. The water’s too warm anyway. Well, so is the rest of the room. It was uncomfortably warm last week when I moved in there, and we were having some moderately warm weather at the time.

Now that the August summer is into full, painfully hot swing (at least for my weak british skin), the room has turned into some sort of sauna or oven, take your pick. Well, saunas are supposed to be good for you aren’t they? Frankly, I don’t care, since it has me sweating more than a… sausage, for lack of better metaphor, 24/7. I invested in a fan last week, but as the temperature’s increased outside, it’s become close to impossible to breath in the room, thanks to the window barely opening at all, without the fan blowing right in my face all day and night.

So I’ve been taking mostly every opportunity to get out of said room, which unfortunately means spending money. Money, one of my least favorite things; or at least my lack of it anyway. I’ve done pretty well to keep my bank balance in the green, or white, or black, or whatever color it is you say you’re in when you’re not overdrawn. People say University is expensive, but my spending’s gone up a lot more since coming back to Southampton. I guess that’s partially thanks to having a social life here, and the fact that said social life relies on me spending £5 to even see friends on any one day. Then add in food, drinks at the pub, and other things, and I’ve been spending close to £20/day since I came back here. It doesn’t take a genious to work out that this will not go well with my £150/month bank balance, even with the bit extra my mum gave me for the summer.

So to cut a long story short (because I just realised I have a train to catch in 20 minutes) I’m stuck with the choice between staying in the room from hell, doing the same thing I do every day, or going to see friends and doing more fun things, but spending money I don’t have.

One thing that WAS worth spending money though – Seeing The Dark Knight 2 days before release, even if it was twice the price. I may or may not go into a more detailed review later on, but for now all I can say is 10/10, and I’m still somewhat stuck for words with anything further to say.

A ticket to the semi-finals of university

I’m not really doing so well with this whole blog affair am I? I started off well, thinking I’d never run out of things to write about. But at the end of the day, I have.

It’s not so much that I’ve run out of things to write about, just that I’ve run out of INTERESTING things to write about. Still, in a blog about myself, there’s a fairly limited number of things I am going to think are interesting, so I guess I’ll just get on with it and ramble about myself a bit more, eh?

So, my first year of university has come to pass, in a relatively dull fashion. I was going to say “uneventful” and “predictable” in that sentence, though I suppose that would be a lie. It would also be a lie to say that this was the easy first year I was expecting, or that I put in anywhere near enough effort.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever learn from my mistakes, or if I’ll always keep scraping through on the last minutes of deadlines, the minimum of passes at the early stages, and the least effort required. I can say now that my intention is to put in 100% effort, do all my work on time, and start revising sooner than a week before my exams next year… but I say that every year. Each year I seem to get closer and closer to just getting what I need, and one of these days it’s going to go too far.

Still, the results were decent. I got 70% or so in  my programming class, which is pretty good by university standards.  My other classes averaged out at around 60%, which isn’t bad, but considering what I had to do at the last minute to scrape that, and the level of some of the stuff, I should be getting higher than that. I guess some would say “what are you complaining about”, and less successful people would hate me for being able to do that well with so little effort, but the truth is, I know I can do better than that. I’m -capable- of getting a top level degree, I’m capable of being the best in my class (from what I’ve heard I actually got similar/a bit lower) to most other people in the class this year), and I was capable of getting MUCH higher grades than I did this year.

From being a top-of-the-class quiet kid who had nothing more to his life than school, I’ve coasted through the latter half of secondary school and college with the attitude that it doesn’t really matter. And it really didn’t. I suddenly realised around year 9, that it doesn’t MATTER if I get straight As. I knew I had the potential to get them at the time, but I was content to give in passable work because at the end of the day, that was all that mattered. Every exam was just a ticket to get you through to the NEXT exam, and the requirements were low. As long as you showed more potential than a comatosed gnat, they’d quite gladly let you go on another year for some more exams. It wasn’t until college that I had a bit of a wake up call when I realised that my grades were starting to matter. Of course, it was still just another entry requirement for some more exams at university, but this was something I actually wanted. After seeing some of the better and worse universitys, I realised that I really would like to go to a good one, and not a bad one.

But still, I achieved the bare minimum requirements after recovering from an extreme slump at the start of college. I always thought though, that at the end of the day, when it came down to it at university, there was no reason why I couldn’t do everything, get top results, and come out with a 1st degree.

I’m still waiting for that day to come, the day where I suddenly realise that I need to put in some hard work, to prioritise doing coursework in good time, to study as I’m going along and not at the last minute. I can say that I’ve realise that now, but I’ve said it before. I hope that next year I can kick myself into gear, but I’ll just have to wait and see.

The exams were.. not fun. It didn’t help that I’d missed a bunch of the classes, and couldn’t begin to understand half of the maths stuff. As I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of the teaching methods in university, especially for maths, but that’s no excuse. Half of it was stuff I’d done before, so I could have learned it if I put in the effort. At the end of the day, I was glad to actually pass the exams (which I honestly didn’t think I’d do) given the amount I’d studied for them.

Still, at the end of the day, the exam results weren’t all that important in comparison to what I’d done already for coursework. I passed well enough overall, and I go back to learn another year next year. Thing is, next year actually matters. This year doesn’t count towards my overall grade, it’s another of those tickets to the next round. But now it’s really time for me to unlock the supposedly hidden talent that I keep thinking I have, and hope it hasn’t shrivelled up and died by now.

For now though, I’m going to enjoy the summer. Right now I’m relaxing with my parents in cornwall, but next week I’ll be back to good old Southampton to see my friends. Can’t wait.

Thanks for what memories

So James, I should blog, should I?

Well, nothing much to say. I should really get out more so I can blog more about things. Though it really does highlight your geekyness, when your reason for getting more is so that you can spend more time writing things on the internet. Reminds me of this really.

What that also reminds me of is my trip to America last year. I wish I had blogged in that. I had intended to, but.. didn’t for some reason. My livejournal was disused, and I didn’t feel like making a new one. That, and I didn’t keep any record of the stuff we’d done, so by the time it got to my weekly internet session, I wasn’t sure what to say.

Still, the memories are in my head at least, and that’s what matters. And there’s lots of them. Some good, some bad, but still, I wouldn’t have changed much about that trip. As frustrating as some moments with Julian were, the places we went, things we saw, and people we met more than made up for it. In fact, I’d quite like to go back next year, but I’ll have to see about that.

But that brings me onto another point. Last year was full of memories, especially the summer. As well as traveling, there were great times back home, getting to see friends again which I hadn’t seen for a while. I had barely seen James, Nathan, or Greg in months even before travelling, so it was great to see them all, stay with them for a while, and generally enjoy myself with my friends for the remainder of that summer. And even though the relationship was doomed to failure, there were some good moments and memories with Jess in there too. The years prior to that were equally as memorable, finishing school, going on to college, passing my exams, moving out of my mum’s house, my first girlfriend, my first full time job. It all adds up to a pretty eventful and memorable few years.

There is a point beyond my rose-tinted and bleary-eyed nostalgia though. This year has, at least in contrast, been incredibly un-memorable. Starting university was supposed to be a big new chapter in my life. Meeting new people, doing new things, growing up. Perhaps I’d already done enough growing up in the previous years, maybe I’ve already become too mature for university? It’s hard to say. But really, other than that, there’s not been much to say about it. Of course, moving into university to live on my own was a big step in my life, and studying a degree is obviously something that will bring many challenges (and hopefully rewards) over the coming years. But what have I done this year? Met a few people, made maybe 2 or 3 decent friends, got drunk a few times, mostly alienated myself from the student “lifestyle” and general group of peers (well, much the same as school in that respect I suppose) while pretty much doing the same thing I have for the past 3 years. That is, putting the minimum effort into my work while messing around with computer stuff.

I suppose it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that that’s how it’s turned out, as I never really expected myself to suddenly have a massive group of friends and go out partying or anything like that. It hasn’t been that way in the past, and it wouldn’t be now. It shouldn’t be, in fact. It’s not like I want to replace or improve upon any of my friends or memories, but it would still be nice if university offered a bit more to me than a bit of independence, and more education.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, other than to say that the past year has been incredibly underwhelming. I suppose I will remember it for the “first time I got uncomfortably drunk”, “the first time I was able to sleep stupid hours without irritating a parent”, or “the first time I was able to miss coursework without any second chances”, but none of those are really good things. I suppose there -have- been changes in my life related to the above, but I’d much rather I had better options for my spare time than playing computer games, getting drunk with semi-friends, or procrastinating about work.

But, it’s only been half a year so far. Here’s hoping this summer lives up to some of the previous ones, and maybe the next term of University will give me something more interesting to write about.

Maths and me

They don’t mix. At least not any more. I’m really wondering what went wrong between primary school and now. Back in primary school I got the best maths marks the school had seen in years. By secondary school I had come up against a few people better than me, but I was still in the top 5 or 10 in the school as far as grades go. In college I remained in the top groups, but general laziness meant I fell down to a B grade. But now… I have no clue what the lecturer is even talking about with this stuff. Just looking at these formulas and calculations makes my brain want to cry and go cut it’s metaphorical wrists in the corner. Half of it isn’t even any harder than the college stuff either, but I don’t remember a thing from college after a year anyway.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I think I’ve actually got stupider since secondary school. I may have been force fed some morsels of knowledge and tasty facts since then, but I seem to have lost the core ability to learn, understand, and work things out.

I don’t know. It’s hard to say how much of this stuff is talent, and how much is effort and hard work. I certainly haven’t been doing much of the latter, I’m just not sure if I still have the former.

To sum it up, this is pretty much how I feel about maths right now -

I am very tempted to write/draw something like that in the exam, in fact.

Anyway, Heroes is on now, and I’ve finally remembered to actually turn on the TV when it’s on for once, rather than watching it online a day later. So, I’m going to go watch it now.

If sleep is for the weak, then call me weak

I’m getting a bit tired of being nocturnal now.

It wasn’t exactly intentional, but I’ve got stuck in a really bad pattern of sleeping in the past week or so. As I mentioned in my last post, I found that the on;y time I could make any progrss with my coursework was at the last possible moment, the night before it was due in. With a few pieces of coursework due in the space of a week, I ended up pulling a few too many all-nighters.

Thing is, by the time this was done, I was stuck in a habit of going to bed at 6-10am, and getting up at 2-6pm. That is not good.

I tried to get out of it. But I’m not good with alarms. I’ve been known to turn off alarms in my sleep without realising. I’ve often slept through alarms set for classes or work. So now that I’m going into 2 weeks with no specific schedule, an alarm set for the morning, making irritating noises at me after 4 hours sleep, does nothing. I’ll hit it repeatedly for about half an hour to make it snooze, and eventually it’ll either give up on me, or I’ll find the button that turns it off. Or knock it off the desk.

I even tried skipping sleep one night (or day) and staying up until the next night. Somehow though, after being tired all day, by the time it got to 10pm, I wasn’t tired. In the end, I still stayed up fairly late (though not as late as I had been lately). Thing is, apparently my sleep just added up, because I then somehow slept for around 14 hours, and still woke up at 4pm.

I think my body’s just given up on sleeping now though. I wasn’t paricularly tired last night. I slept for a few hours this morning, but just kinda rolled around half asleep for most of it. Then I got up, sat around for a bit, went out. Now I’m a bit tired and feeling quite lazy, but I tried laying down and didn’t fall asleep.

Life without sleep would be very convenient. There aren’t enough hours in the day for life. Or at least not for procrastinating about life.

I don’t really have much else to say at the moment. This has been an incredibly uneventful week (as always), so I guess I’ll leave it at that.