Author: tola

I like penguins, yes I do. I like penguins how about you? wonchop‘s last day tomorrow before he gets his freedom, poor Wonchop.

Spent the morning learning my seven times table so I wouldn’t be embarrassed in maths when we played fizz buzz (don’t tell anyone). For those of you who haven’t played it, fizz buzz is a maths game where you go round a circle counting. If you come to a number which is a multiple of 5 or has a 5 in it, you say fizz. If it’s a multiple of or contains a 7 then you say buzz. I said seven.

Laura’s last live journal entry made me feel guilty for making her feel guilty 😛 We’re all good. Lots of nice hugging today.

Dropped round mchicago‘s house to suggest we didn’t go to the ALUG meeting as he wasn’t happy about driving in icy, dark conditions and stage crew were a member down for the Christmas show after a knee injury(!). He lent me a couple of SQL books, yey! My PHP advanced and MySQL books arrived from Amazon this morning, so lots of reading to do. I was also reading about a Computer Science course in Iceland today, much to lauperr‘s disgust!

This evening I turned up to the school Christmas concert posing as a stage crew member. Hehe, I actually ran sound for a while when djkoa went back stage, reluctantly. Told Harry a few things about using the sound desk I should have told him a long time ago. I told people off for bickering on comms and the show went pretty well. I tried not to be seen at the end – I don’t want to be seen to be back on the stage crew since I’ve publicised the fact that I’m no longer on the stage crew, and I’d like to keep it that way. We got everyone swaying for one of the last numbers which was funny. We also put on our *non PAT tested* fairy lights on as a protest against the ban in school.

After the show, Wez and I snuck out some free mince pies and nipped into Smiths for a quickie, again. This is becoming a habit. Although it’s a habit that’s going to have to change – the price of Guinness has gone up, AGAIN! £2.65!!!

Today wasn’t too great.

I woke up late and didn’t have time for my breakfast which turned out to be the reason I was feeling really crappy this morning. I only found this out when laura started feeding me cakes and I started to feel less sick! I needed a drink but my water bottle was… mouldy. Anyway I was stressed all morning about having not done a load of differentiation questions. When it came to the lesson they weren’t even taken in, we played with calculators all lesson. On top of that bouncykaz had come into school and I was feeling kind of odd around her. I’d wanted to give her a hug for a long long time and to offload all my troubles onto her – but somehow it didn’t feel right, I felt awkward and she definately didn’t have the time to wait around to listen to me whining. That and she’s on the moral high ground because of my “disgusting behaviour” and the “person I’m becoming” again. Search me. I just need someone to cry over.

I had a triple free in the afternoon and I thought as it’s christmas and I really wasn’t in the mood for working I’d help out the stage crew. That just stressed me out more. The stage crew is pathetic. It’s full of year 10 boys and girls who do nothing but argue over each others non-existent authority and use the dark spaces around the stage to fornicate with each other. Seriously, at one point there was a couple fondling each other in the sound loft, a couple in the lighting loft and a couple on control. They’ve taken to using some pretty vulgar slang on a regular basis and locking things away so nobody else can get to them. Not one of them has a grip on reality and they’re severely lacking leadership. All of them have outgrown their boots by several sizes.

Wez tries his best, but he doesn’t have the time or patience to organise them and quite frankly they’re past help. I’d really like to take on the responsibility and sort them out, but I don’t have the time either – and I don’t believe I’d get any support from the school. I blame the problems completely on them. Anything that can not be quantified in a league table somewhere isn’t taken seriously. Anything extra-curricular is actively discouraged because it takes up time that could be used reading text books. I’ve been trying to say that there should be a member of staff watching over them for years. It seems it will take a serious injury for them to realise that there are 14 year olds who don’t know what they’re doing playing with 230V electricity and climbing ladders unsupervised and big headed.

I was feeling really odd for the rest of the day and just floated around trying to keep out of peoples way.

I got home and fell asleep. When I woke up, three people wanted to know why I was ignoring them on MSN, Laura was offended that I hadn’t responded to her text message and mchicago was complaining that nobody contributes to any of the projects on iMen and he’s doing all the work himself. What he doesn’t realise is I’d love to spend all my time programming for iMen but I’m under some pretty serious pressure to get my grades up in my A-levels. Every time I spend time doing ANYTHING for iMen I’m feeling guilty about the backlog of maths work I don’t seem to be able to escape from. The other thing is I feel I never feel like there’s anything I CAN do. The programming is way over my head (all I know is it’s trying to factorise big numbers in a program distributed across computers), and anything I DO do I seem to be treading on someone’s toes and get yelled at for breaking something.

I think I’ve upset lauperr by not giving her enough attention. I knew this was going to happen. Perhaps I’m too wrapped up in myself to realise how other people are feeling.

Wonchop is leaving school. More on this later, I just mentioned it now because he’s claiming I neglect him and don’t mention him on my livejournal.

Anyone else I’ve neglected? I’m going back to bed.

Pretty much nothing useful happened in lessons today, with the possible exception of maths where we used differentiation in mechanics, yummy. I played with my SQL query a bit more in my General Studies lesson… Getting closer, maybe.

I’ve been hyper all day and now I’m shattered. Did some stage crew stuff after school (I know I know I quit, but I couldn’t resist the gaffa and ladder and pursuading the caretaker that we WERE allowed to borrow the £200 a piece mics from music.) When I’d finished that wez and I went to the chippy then to Smiths for a swift one (singing along to spice girls in the car, yey.) I told the woman in the chippy that I was Jesus (there was a reason, honest) and flirted with the bar maid in Smiths, don’t tell Laura, it’ll only prove her point and I do hate losing arguments 😛

I managed to slip into a conversation in IRC to Kaz that I’m going out with Laura, without her noticing, so the worst is over. Until she realises I said it…

My eyes are hurting, I’m cold and tired and I have a bizillion differentiation questions to do for the morning. Life doesn’t get better than this.

Anything else? Oh yes I bit Lily, revenge is sweet. So mature. My books from Amazon should arrive tomorrow and I may be ALUGing on wednesday 🙂 Oh and I finally heard from Adam after far too long. He’s ok. oh oh oh Mich came into school today and brought me a hug and a christmas card, yey! I think that’s it.

THREE DAYS TO GO.

So, “we got him”. I guess this is one of those days when we’re supposed to remember where we were when we heard the news. Where were you when they captured Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground? Well I was in my bedroom watching BBC News 24 on my computer. How interesting.

I have to admit I found the scenes of celebrating Iraqis in the streets quite emotional. News like that doesn’t usually effect me very much, it’s in a different world, the other side of my TV with little resemblence to reality in my sheltered understanding of the word. But something about this event struck a chord with me. Perhaps it was just clever journalism – making me believe that something truly spectacular had happened that meant I should back my primeminister. But there was something bare and real about the reactions of the Iraqis at the press conference to the news and video footage – something that brought a tear to my eye and made me take a look at my own position in the world. Then again, I have been drinking quite a lot today…

I got an email from Peter today. Remember Peter? He’s the crazy loon who took off to India on a “life experiment” and is still there! (I wonder if you’re reading this Peter) The amazing stories of his adventures on the other side of the world only added to this odd feeling I was experiencing.

Anyway, on a lighter note dev went down today for the first serious downtime in a couple of years. Took about 6 hours for mchicago to fix and he still doesn’t know what exactly caused it. Got it working again though, so well done him.

Had a meal with my grandparents and family in the Nags Head, very nice. Lovely baileys liquer coffee, mmm. Later I went to the christmas pub quiz in Dyke but we were abandoned by Mr C and managed to lose! We did win a mini bottle of wine for one round though, which will be taken to Megabite 2003 next week (it’s this week now isn’t it?).

Something else happened too.

Mum woke me this morning with some post from Nottingham University. They’ve invited me to visit the University and sent a few brochures as well as a CD-ROM containing videos and documents. I really really like the look of Nottingham. There was also a poster to torment myself with.

Cleaned out the gerbil which took AGES as usual.

Went to lauperr‘s for the rest of the day. She temporarily suspended her diet and attempted to eat two jumbo sausages. Her dad helped me with some SQL for my coursework, thanks bob 🙂 and Jessica sat on my knee, told me jokes and gave me a biro moustache.

I found out that onelessmoment has a livejournal, w00t!

mchicago and bouncykaz are both home now, hopefully I’ll get to see Kaz at some point. Got home and discussed stuff in #imen – found out J has actually written some decent documentation!

Tomorrow is maths, coursework and christmas pub quiz.

Not a very eventful day. Double maths in the morning :S

At about period 6 Wez thought it would be funny to pour a whole box of little bits of polystyrene packaging (commonly known as the missing matter of the universe) over my head. Took us about an hour to clear it up and he didn’t even help. Bar Steward.

Got home pretty late and checked my emails before falling asleep. Woke up to a horrible sight, Wez. He’d come to torment me after work.

Watched some bits on the Animatrix and listened to music… really was a boring day.

Oh btw, school has banned fairy lights in school because they aren’t all PAT tested. Just about sums up our school. I confronted both deputy heads together about it, said if I could get them PAT tested for free would they allow them? The answer – you’d better ask the head. I don’t particularly like Christmas decorations myself, but it just shows… argh.

iMen seems to be kicking off again – what with DeepDown having a new lease of life. Also we’ve started more in depth discussion of a report which I wrote a foreword for a while back. The document was by a sixth former in Hertfordshire and was given to the head teacher of his school as a suggestion to the goveners that the school should adopt Free and Open Source Software. The reason the discussion started was that some changes that slef suggested didn’t get included in the final document, and the general feeling was that it was all far too rushed (and factually incorrect) and could hae a damaging effect.

A new version is being discussed which may be developed on the iMen site. Apparently the document was discussed at an ALUG meeting in Norwich too. We’ll see where that heads. J and I are currently working on revising the definitions in the Glossary. I also found out some of J’s opinions on copyright for documentaiton which I’d like to discuss further.

Some progress was made on computing coursework. I’ve got my tables set up in phpmyadmin the way I *think* they should be and some sample data too. I’ve been playing around with queries and text primary keys – I abandoned the latter because it was a bad idea.

Mr C got a parcel from firebox.com containing a funny looking frisbee, an “orgasmatron” which he tried on Mr T amongst other people, a free bag of sweets(!) and some bags of air for packing which were christened “Lily’s breasts” but were then all popped because Ruth’s reaction to the bangs was priceless!

I got in a mard with laura because she yelled something obscene about me across the school hall, but then we made up 😛 When Mrs Ch caught up with Wez about his UCAS form he promptly ran through the school – ran across the dining hall yelling “I hate personal statements and I hate life” (much to the amusement of some members of the lower school) before running outside and jumping up and down. We all blew kisses to him from the IT Annexe window and he hugged paula before walking into a door on the way back in,

Argh, it’s tomorrow again.

mmm, cold pizza.

Let’s give this a try. Logjam – just apt-get installed it. Not sure quite why having a separate app to update my journal with is particularly useful, but let’s suck it and see. Might try a command line one later or maybe even try to get one to run on my phone… except I really don’t have time.

The good news is that I got an offer today for CS at Nottingham. The bad news is that they want AAB. From a U to a B in maths. Hmm. So. Do I slog my guts out for even a remote chance of getting there, or do I relax a bit and put UEA as my first choice. May even find out that I wouldn’t like Nottingham anyway.

My current thinking is to put Nottingham as a first choice and UEA as my insurance offer – but I know I’ll still be disappointed if I don’t make my first choice. I haven’t even told them I’m thinking of shifting my year of entry yet! Well we’ll see how all the other offers come through – wonder what will happen with “Philosophy and Computer Science” at Warwick (don’t ask). I’m not even sure if Computer Science is what I want to be doing – still worrying I should have chosen something more engineering or even design. Sheesh, what a lot of uncertainty.

After the stress of all that I went to a games lesson last period and played badminton for about an hour and a half. Not content with the battering my body had taken from that (hey, I’m not used to all this exercise) I went and amused a load of year sevens by joining in their dance practice in the hall for a laugh. Loud music, lights, strobe, smoke – what more could you ask for? Oh I do miss stage crew. Yup you guessed it, time wasting again.

I’ve just about organised sitting in on some lower sixth stats lessons after christmas, so I’ll be doing even more maths. To be honest maths is making quite a lot of sense recently – it’s just there’s so much of it to remember. I’ve just got to learn not to blank out when it comes to an exam.

I’ve just watched Swordfish again, excellent film, although not quite as gripping as I remember. Certainly doesn’t have the re-watchability of the Matrix Triology. I finally found out why all three books in the Schrodinger’s Cat Triology all say Part One.

Got stuck on some SQL again today, but J is coming to the rescue with a book.

Quadruple free in the morning, think I’m going to get out of bed? Think again.

Well OK I got up at 10, tried to fix the stylesheets on hippygeek but not doing too brilliantly and still won’t validate. I don’t think I can do much about the stylesheet on livejournal without a paid account. I’ve picked the template I like but the fonts are too damned small 😛 and conflict with my hippygeek stylesheet.

I spent a large amount of time today discussing the bus timetabling system for my computing coursework with Mr M. mchicago got me a bit further on track but there are still things I don’t know how to do in SQL, think I may need to read up a bit. My entity relationships are getting nearer to vaguely correct now – the data entry for this thing is going to be phenomenal.

I got a conditional offer from UEA for computing science on Saturday, 280 points – with my physics AS I reckon that translates to BBE! Not sure they’d accept an E in maths though 😉 Hopefully more offers soon.

Wez brought his new disco speakers into school today to try out in the hall, niiiiice. Pranced around the hall to the sound of ghostbusters and bohemian rhapsody… Hopefully the school should be getting its new PA by Christmas, not that I’ll have time to play with it.

dev was being exceptionally slow earlier, but I think mchicago may have fixed it.

Right, maths.