Hungry this Christmas

Those who have spoken to me since the last Tuesday of term, seen my Facebook page or heard about it some other way will know that I haven’t been well recently. But for those who didn't know, you know now.

I’ve had some sort of vomiting bug, and I’m even less pleased about it than usual.

That may seem like a weird thing to say, but it annoys me purely as it causes my diet to become limited, in order to reduce the amount that I throw up. I’m ticked off more this time as it means that I won’t be pigging-out over Christmas. The “being ill” thing doesn’t really bother me as it gives me an excuse to lounge around without the “haven’t you got anything more constructive to do?” parent nag.

I was getting better, and had increased the amounts I was eating to near my usual portions. But today it came back with a vengeance; it’s been so bad today, that I haven’t had any sleep yet tonight due to going back-and-forth to the toilet in order to lose what remains of my last meal.

And this all means that I won’t be eating any chocolate that’s given to me over Christmas. Wonderful…

Merry Christmas; and make sure the juices run clear from your turkey, or you could be joining me.

Does Not Compute

At the beginning of the year, I was pleased that we were getting Mr. Etisoy as our computing teacher, but now I’m not so sure.

We’ve got to do a practical project for A2, and we got started on it a week ago last Wednesday. Mr. Etisoy told us to find a Client, who we could work with throughout the project; I am not lucky enough to know someone who would fit the bill easily enough, and after talking to my dad on the following Saturday, we came up with a couple of ideas.

The first was for my dad, he wanted a program to keep track of the stocks and shares he had inherited from my Great Uncle Les, but the idea was quashed by Mr. Etisoy when I told him that the program wouldn’t be for a business. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!?

The other was a stock control program for a pub; my dad knows the landlords of The Bridge End Inn, and while he was talking about my problem over a pint, they offered to be my clients. This was turned down by Mr. Etisoy after he deemed it “not complex enough”. As a result of this, I texted dad saying it was a no go, so he told the landlords the same.

After having both ideas turned down, I got my dad on the case; he phoned up Mr. Etisoy, asking about the ideas that had been turned down and why the subject wasn’t being taught as effectively (as at this point Mike Jamieson and I were worried about our grades slipping). As a result, Mr. Etisoy finally accepted the Pub Idea, but it was too late, the landlords had been turned down and it was their day off.

This forced us to find another client, I thought of an educational game that could be used in a primary school, so I approached a local primary school asking if they would be willing to help me, they took a note down that night, and I got a call the next day at around 2pm saying “no”. This meant I had to try another school; it was Thursday at this point, so if this school said no I would be in deep shit. I tried my old primary school this time hoping that as I was an ex-pupil they would be more co-operative, I sent an e-mail to them and awaited a reply; I gave them until 12:30pm the next day to reply, but as I had no reply I phoned them to find out that the person I was writing to didn’t work on Fridays.

Now I really was in the shit, there was 2 hours to go until half term and I still had no project, I went to Mrs. Fleming and asked is there anything she could do to help; she got Mr. Winter in as he was the head of the ICT department. After a Quick discussion, we settled on using an idea that Dr Barker had given me about doing a blockbuster game-show simulator that he could add custom questions to. I went to Mr. Etisoy to give him an update, I first told him that the school idea had been screwed, and then pitched the newest idea to him, and he said yes.

At long last, I had a Computing project. All that remained was to get a bit more information from Dr Barker, and then I was set to do the work in the holidays.
While all this was going on, my dad was exchanging e-mails with Mr. Mottershead, due to all the problems there was in class, involving both general teaching and the project. This meant along the way I was also pestered by Mr. McAree asking what was going on.

The result of all this chaos and my dad's e-mail assault is that the staff have sorted thiings so that after the half term we're gaining an hour extra of computing a week, and are getting our lessons split between Mr. Etisoy for the Project, and Mr. Fernihough for the Theory.

I’m glad that’s all sorted out, as during it I was more stressed out than I have been for a while.

Under the Weather

I said I was going to write this about a fortnight ago, but I never got around to it. So I might as well fill you in on the illness that I had.
It all started on the second Wednesday of term.
I wasn’t feeling great when I got up, but I had hoppers’ voice in my mind saying: “It’s not that bad, you can still go to school”. What I had at that time was a minor headache and a nagging cough. My first lesson was computing, and as it went on I started feeling worse. The headache started throbbing, and I started getting the occasional dizzy spell. On Wednesday I also do some volunteering in the town library, so I had to go there as well, during the hour I was there, I stared getting hot and cold flushed and my energy simply left me; I felt dead. There was also the complication that today we were going to PC world to check prices for dales computer (which he never got, someone bought a laptop for him instead, and they didn’t wait for Win 7), when we got to PC world, I was given some Paracetamol by my Mum, who had driven us there. They helped to a degree; it dulled the headache, made the dizzy spells more infrequent, and generally reduced my suffering.
When we got home, I was shattered, and so slept for about 2 hours.
I was kept off school for obvious reasons, and we investigated the possibility of the illness being swine flu. The online questionnaire said I qualified for the Tamiflu drug, so I sent mum to go get it. They had the reverse effect. Thursday was the day my mum went out, so my little brother was left with instructions on what to do if I got worse, they weren’t needed as at about 9pm I started feeling worse and upon recognising the early warning signs (I had thrown up, showing that the Tamiflu had hit my system) I phoned mum to get her home. I had started feeling cold, so had wrapped my self up with everything I could get my hands on: A full set of clothes, jumper, fleece, dressing gown, and duvet. On getting home she found me in bed, wrapped up and shivering, and immediately got me out of all the things I’d wrapped my self in, then took my temperature: 38.5 Degrees C.
The next day, the Tamiflu took a trip to the sewers, via the toilet.
In order to find out what was actually wrong with me, I was taken to CueDoc, and was given 10 days worth of the amoxicillin anti-biotic, as the doctor suspected that I had a chest infection, he also said that he wouldn’t trust Tamiflu at all, and we did well to send it on the porcelain journey.
After taking the anti-biotic for a week, the only symptom I had left was some catarrh and a cough. This lead us to believe that the illness I actually had was bronchitis, and as it was past its infectious state, I could go back to school.
So to anyone who still thinks I had swine flu, get rid of those stupid delusions.

The Final Year

The last part of my holiday consisted of a camping holiday with dad (where my DS game case proved its worth after the car ran over it, while keeping the games inside relatively unscathed) and a trip to Staffordshire university, after which it was the annual ritual of getting all summer work done within the last week.

When school started, there was an unexpected surprise, Mrs McArdle had returned to trinity, and she was attached to my form. She was my form tutor from Y7 to Y10 but left to further her career elsewhere. I also found that I’d lost an hour off of all my lessons except systems, leaving me with 2 days where I have only one lesson, one of which is at the end of the day, meaning I have to stay in school all day doing nothing until last period.

The only bit of summer work I had was research for systems, I’d already done the practical bit of that before i went on the expedition but i still had to write it up, problem was that my printer gave up while printing it, so i was left in the lurch; my solution was to printing it during my free period in the morning, otherwise, Mr Birch would have another excuse to bitch at me. When i presented it to Mr Birch in lesson, I expected him to have his criticisms, like a lack of analysis or conclusions in my work, that’s fair enough, it’s in the mark scheme, but when he said it was “too text heavy” I couldn’t believe it; it was like stepping back into GCSE ICT. Where in the mark scheme does it say that the research can’t have too much text?

This year has to have a silver lining. Wait, it does, it’s the last year, and there’s the ball at the end of it.

The Great British summer

The first part of my summer was busy and wet to say the least; the reality was that i didn’t get to relax properly for a fortnight after we broke up, and during that time it didn’t just rain, it pissed down.

This didn’t help the first activity of the holiday, the Duke of Edinburgh expedition. 4 days of bad weather, tiring physical exertion and the torture of being around a combined force of David Gopsil and Ian Dodd. The first day we were forced to change our route due to high winds, on the second day we got the same treatment but with a side order of rain and we couldn’t avoid it this time as we had to go into it to get to that night’s camp. The third day was better but the wind wasn’t with us at all so sailing was out of the question, although we did have a good campfire that night. the final day was a slow relaxed paddle as we found ourselves being an hour ahead of time, but we weren’t complaining as we didn’t have to paddle like the clappers and we got off a bit earlier.

The second event of the holiday for me (and Marie from my D of E group) was a UCLAN summer school, which was supposed to give a taste of university life, but what it actually consisted of was a 3 days of activities and workshops that really didn’t have much to do with uni at all. It wasn’t that bad though, the activities and workshops were great, and me and Marie made some new friends while there, one of which came to Carlisle at a later point in the holidays.

well that's it for the first half of the holidays.

One big update

It’s been ages since I've written to this blog so the following entries are basically what has happened since my last entry just before the exams

A Life With Less Maths, That’s My Futurama

I’ve finally done it! As of today I no longer have any formal maths lessons, due to the fact I had my last maths A-Level exams today I’m able to get rid of maths from my timetable altogether, so now I have a negotiated absence set for every Tuesday morning, 3 hours free on Friday morning, and the ability to go home at lunch on Wednesday. I say “formal lessons” only because I might have to attend some of the next Y12’s lessons to brush up on the bits I’m useless at, but that’s only if my exam results aren’t up to par.

Recently, my mum got a Sky subscription, so I’ve been able to watch more of the TV that I wasn’t able to watch much of on Freeview, namely The Crystal maze reruns, Robot wars (which has sadly left bravo 2, hopefully not for long) and some others. The main program that I’m watching more of is Futurama (yes, I prefer it to The Simpsons, although I’ll still watch that), I’d liked what I’d seen of it on CH4 but never got into a routine of watching it, or was simply not awake to watch it, now I’m watching it on Sky1 at 6 pm every night; because of this I’ve become a bit of a fan, and I’ve spent the last 4 hours customizing my PC with a desktop wallpaper (which wasn’t of the best visual quality, so I spent about an hour fixing it) and system sounds (the searching for and editing of which took 3 hours). I still haven’t got around to making icons yet, although I have a few from themes I downloaded while looking for sounds that might do the job.

Exam Assault

Now its crunch time; up to now I’ve only had a few exams, and they were lighter ones and i only had 1 per day.

Tomorrow is the big one, I have 3 exams lined up, physics in the morning and two maths exams in the afternoon.

The following Thursday is my final exam day, with two maths exams in the morning.

I’m now going to continue my last frenzied attempt to cram as many equations into my nut as possible.

the Impending Doom

There's only a week to go until study leave begins, but that doesn’t mean that the exam period starts then.

For me, the impending Doom of exams starts this coming Monday.

On Monday morning I have my Computing COMP1 Practical exam. This basically consists of a small amount of theory, paired with a set of tasks to code into a supplied program. I'm good at coming up with programming solutions, so this should be a breeze; the following Friday morning contains the Computing COMP2 Theory paper.

The papers I’m worried about are the maths CORE3 and CORE 4 as the topic they cover are difficult and I know I won’t get my B target. The physics, Decision Maths, and Systems papers are OK, but I still worry about them to a degree. I also have a Maths Mechanics re-sit, which the only problem with last time was that the questions were lethal.

Even though it’s supposed to be study leave, I’m going to enjoy myself a bit, I’m going to be ordering some trading cards to improve my game, so that during the revision breaks I’ll have, I'll be able to go out and play against the community that gathers regularly in the town library.

After buying those cards, I won’t be buying anything for a while, as I’ll be using any money I get for putting money back into my bank account, in order to re-fill it after buying my laptop.

Lots about my LAN

I have been trying to get a Local Area Network in our house for ages, today it finally happened.

This is thanks to Mr. Tarrant and my good friend Scud.

I should explain.

For those who don’t know, a LAN or Local Area Network is a means of connecting computers together which are close together. LANs give a wealth of bonuses to a system, the most useful is the ability to share files and printers, another bonus is for PC gamers, LANs give the ability to host networked multiplayer games via TCP/IP, allowing the dispense of hot-seat gaming or the ability to actually play a multiplayer of the game.

Mine was brought about originally by Scud, my computer needed to be connected to his home network in order for us to transfer a large file across, so when he connected it, I watched and learnt how to set up the wired connection and how to share. It turned out in the end that the sharing was the main part of scuds part, as I still couldn’t connect the computers together through our ADSL2+ Modem/Router which was supplied to us by O2, I knew that it was possible as some of the techies at O2 had said they had done it quite simply, this made me more determined to get it to work.

The turning point was in computing today, when I mentioned it to Mr. Tarrant, who said that the computers needed to be part of the same workgroup. This got me thinking, what were the computers’ workgroups? I got home, and found that they were all different, so if they were to see each other I had to change them to the same.

As soon as I had done this and rebooted, I was greeted by a load of printer installation boxes, meaning that the computers had found each others printers and were trying to install them, meaning that the network was up and running.

I have spent all of tonight configuring it with some games (so far I’ve managed Freedom Force and Worms Armageddon), and configuring the sharing so that I can access the files of other networked computers, then mapping the shared folders as drives.

Things can’t get much better on the computers at the moment.

Building And Booting The Brand Spanking New

IT’S FINALLY HAPPENED! My computer has been built and is running like a dream except for the occasional hiccup, but that’s the same with any PC.

I went over to the friend who’d be helping me do it at about 11am, where after a trip to the shops, we set out building the beast.

Before we could start building we needed to remove all the old parts and vacuum the case, ready for the new parts.

After cleaning we built the computer as we’d expected to do so, fitting the CPU, RAM and drives to the motherboard, then attaching the Graphics card and Power supply. This is as far as our luck went, the problems started from here on.

We installed windows as we had expected to. We installed it on the new SATA hard disk I’d bought but we had also fitted my old IDE Hard disk as it was still big enough to be of some use. 3 hours after installing XP we discovered that the installer had installed windows on the SATA drive (as we had told it to), but it had seen the IDE drive as the first drive and so had put the boot data on that drive instead of the intended target (not what we wanted). So after we thought we’d sorted everything, we set out having to re-install XP but with the added challenge of having to get it so that it wouldn’t use the IDE drive. We ended up removing the IDE drive, reinstalling XP, then re-formatting the IDE drive from within the XP installer; this meant all the time we’d taken sorting out the computer after installing the OS had been wasted as this meant that we had to wipe the drives and start form scratch.

After getting it installed properly and the drivers installed properly, we put my computer aside as it was getting late and I could do the rest on my own, we also had to see to my mums computer.

The only problems I've had with it were a reluctance to install XP Service pack 3, a couple of graphics problems (but that was my own doing, I'd set it to a setting incompatible with one of my games), and that fact that the front audio ports wouldn’t work without be mucking about with a setting. Luckily they were all easily fixed.

The computer isn’t top-of-the-range, but it’s a damn sight better than the crap you can buy off the shelf for the same amount of money which are lower spec in regards to CPU, RAM and graphics and have vista and a load of manufacturer crap installed on them. As it is now my computer blasts through all of my current games, reaching about 130 frames per second on guildwars at maximum detail; against the 15-32 fps that my old system could manage, and that wasn’t even at full detail. So overall I’m ecstatic with my new system.

Driving to Distraction

My life feels like swings and roundabouts at the moment, I don’t seem to know whether it’ll go my way or not at the moment.

I’ve finally got all the pieces to re-build my PC, I lost count of the cost ages ago, but it all seems to be coming together; all I have to do now is save up enough to pay the person who’ll be guiding me through the process. What a learning curve that’ll be.

I also have my first driving lesson on Saturday; to be honest I’m not sure what to think of it at the moment. I tend to be able to live without items or skills that others seem to think are mandatory, like a mobile for instance – I only have one as I was given it, I seem to be swaying towards the same mind frame with driving. I know it’ll help me a lot more than a mobile ever will and that I'll need it at some point, but, to be totally frank, the prospect of being on the road scares me, as I've had masses of near misses as a pedestrian. Most were the drivers fault rather than mine as they all seem to happen on pelican crossings; but I just can’t shake this feeling that at one point I'll lose concentration and be the cause rather than the victim, and have it turn out a lot worse than a “near-miss”.

The work at school is a bit lighter at the moment, but the subjects are getting more complicated. Maths has a lot more to remember than any subject (I’m also sick of adults who did O-levels, where everything had to be remembered, harping on about how things are easier, I’d like to see them go through all this again, as it certainly doesn’t seem easier). Physics is also both boring and complicated, the Mechanics is boring as I've done it all before and the Waves is complicated as I've just skipped half the questions in a homework as I didn't understand it.

My fatigue is also getting worse, I write my entries at this time of night as I can’t sleep, then because I've been up late I'm tired in school, the lessons where you’re just talked at make this worse, as I dozed off in maths today during Mrs Ball’s explanation. It also happens in Physics and select systems lessons with Mr Finn.

I also seem to be distracted a lot more recently. Be it some discussion that sparks my interest, or just the usual Wednesday afternoon maths degeneration. I think it’s fair to say my concentration is shot to bits.

Builders, Bikes, Broadband and Booting-up

This half term has not been going well.

For the first few days we were still tidying ready for the builders to come and install our new heating. On Tuesday they came and started ripping out the radiators and boiler.

It just so happened that a couple of other things were due to happen that day.

One was the fact that the police were marking bikes down at Currock house, in an attempt to reduce bike theft, or to at least re-unite the bikes with their owners.

The other was that our broadband was changing over that day, so I’d have to install the new router.

At about 5pm, when the builders had left, Mum and Stuart went out to Currock house to get his bike marked. I didn’t go, even though I own a bike, I hardly use it as my sense of balance is bad, really bad. After they had gone I set about setting the new router up, it was quick and trouble free. But that was not to last.

After the laptop and the cupboard computer were linked to the router, I installed the Anti-virus software that came with the broadband, and updated it. This worked flawlessly on the PC, but it went catastrophically wrong on the laptop. After the update had finished the laptop needed to restart itself, when it got to the point of starting back up, it failed.

I was presented with an error message, which reads something to the tune of: “cannot boot from WINDOWS\CONFIG\SYSTEM . The file may be corrupted or missing. Boot from Windows XP disk and press ‘R’ to attempt repair” For those who didn’t understand any of that, the computer was basically saying “can’t start, shove a disk in me to help me.” The problem was I couldn’t shove said disk in, as the netbook I use lacks a CD/DVD drive.

This spurred a flurry of calls to my good friend Scud, who has helped me out when updating hardware, or sorting problems I haven’t got a clue how to sort. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get through to him at that time, so I was stuck with only one option: - buy a USB drive and attempt recovery myself. Unfortunately this wasn’t going to happen at that time as it was about 9pm at this time.

As my room was in disarray due to the heating upgrade, it meant I’d have to go and sleep at Dales. This proved good for a couple of reasons, the main one was that it gave me somewhere more comfortable to sleep; the other was that as the bottom had just dropped out my world due to the laptop failure, I had a lot of pent up aggression. It was at dales I found how soothing shooting zombies with a shotgun can be, due to trying out “Left 4 Dead”. I’m not usually into 1st person shooters, or more gory games, but I needed a let-out and didn’t care, but I found that I actually enjoyed it, and I was a little better at FPS’ than I thought (but not great).

I arrived home at around lunchtime the next day, to find that the builders had laid waste to the old fire.

The rest of the day really didn’t go my way, first, the wire in my brace come loose, and we have to make arrangements to get a temporary fix for it. At the same time, I’m looking on every computer site I know for a USB CD drive, I find one on PC world which claims to be quite good for the price and has Lightscribe. We decide to reserve it, and collect it on the way back from the orthodontists after getting my brace fixed.

After collecting the drive, I notice that there's something missing from its capabilities, the Lightscribe is missing. It appears as thought the description of the drive online is wrong. On finding this out, I go into legal mode, phoning up PC world, and stating that they violated the “trade of goods description act” meaning that a full refund or trade must happen. As I am hell bent on getting my laptop back on it’s feet tonight, we go out to PC world again to get it exchanged, but this is at 7:40pm, when PC world shuts at 8pm. Mum raced up the motorway, and reaches PC world with only a few minutes to spare. After I explain about the wrong description, the assistant is happy to change it with no extra charge even if the one I was meant to get was about £5 dearer.

On getting home, I try phoning Scud again and get through to him this time, so with his help, get my laptop back into working order, with no loss of data.

Tonight I'm back over at Dale's as there is no way I'm able to find anywhere to sleep back home. At least everything is working again, but even though I get the feeling I've just tempted fate, I can live with it for now as what lies ahead can’t be as bad as what’s happened the last two days, can it?

Don’t Forget the lyrics

It was Stars in their eyes on Thursday night. I came, I sung, I fucked up the lyrics! I carried on as my singing teacher told me to do, but I still can’t shake the fact that I know I made a massive error on stage. But I’ve got away with it as I’ve had many people say that I did a good job, but I think that’s only because I had the balls to get up on stage. As next year will be my last, I’m planning on going out with a blast, by doing something faster, more reliant on acting, or a duet.

At least the half term is here, but I can’t say that with much enthusiasm, as the house is being ripped to bits for the new heating so a lot of it is going to be tidying, packing, being disrupted by the builders, then putting everything back. So I’m not going to get much of a holiday at all.

The reprise is going to come at the end as there’s a canoeing trip on Saturday, and my birthday is on the first day back at school, so things will get better, especially as my birthday will give a cash injection to the upgrade find, which only has £130 to go.

Next Week…

I’m hating what’s coming this week.

I’m having to do all homework ASAP (in Lunch or break), in order to free up the week for, of all things, cleaning and packing. I usually like to put it off as it allows me to be on a high for longer.

During half term the workmen are moving in to upgrade our heating and my room is at the hub, as it contains the new site of the boiler.

This next week is going to be used for packing and preparing for the workmen. All my books are going away, and there’s a lot of them. My PC is taking up residence in the shed, meaning that my laptop is going to be the only functioning computer in the house. The office-under-the-stairs will be packed with anything that can fit. And the TV, DVD player (which is broken anyway), Xbox, VCR, and Wii will be out of commission while the workmen are here.

Me and my bother are also going to be forced to sleep in sleeping bags, either in another bedroom or on the couch.

I’ve been sorting old comic and magazines all day, in-between Computing and Decision maths homework, and it’s starting to get to me.

I’ve also got to have Thursday night free as it’s “Stars in their eyes” and I'll be singing Elton John’s “Can you feel the love tonight”. I surprised a few people last year, hopefully I’ll do the same this year.

Transfer Complete!

Welcome to the new home of my blog, I decided to move it from Windows Live Spaces to Blogger in order to grow readership, as I would ideally like people outside of Trinity to read this. This site also gives me a wealth of new features like an ATOM feed, which anyone who wishes to be constantly updated about my blog can subscribe to.

My older posts can still be found on Windows Live Spaces, just enter in the old address.