Last days of school

WARNING: This is going to be a long post. It contains details of my last few days at school including numerous parties and childish pranks.

WEDNESDAY

Computing party, lots of junk food and a full blown disco. Two guys were in school testing for places to put access points for Mr C’s proposed wireless network. They were completely baffled to come into an A-level class in Computing and see people playing AOE and eating marshmellows with disco music playing. They were even more baffled when someone dancing to Saturday Night (me) shouted across the room “So, is this 802.11b or 802.11g? Not Centrino I hope!”

It was even worse when they were introduced to our water feature. They were also fed marshmellows by lauperr, as were any other random passers by. At one point Mr A came in (future deputy head) and asked if there was any room for his physics class in the IT department. Mr M kindly explained that this was in fact his yeaer 13 Computing lesson so there wasn’t, to which he replied “So all of the rooms are chock-a-block then?”. “Yup” says Mr M as Mr A glances across the room to see only 6 computers being used… for AOE. He wasn’t a happy bunny.

djkoa‘s car was wrapped in cling film, as was Charlie who was escorted to her lesson before being released. Very amusing. djkoa and I also hid a ladder in a skip (very important).

THURSDAY

Had a party in DT where my classmates invented a new game where a celebrations chocolate acts as a ball hit with the celebrations box and all the other players have to catch the “ball” in a plastic cup. If they catch it, they get to bat.

Later on djkoa and I walked out to the front of school in broad daylight with a ladder and made some very important measurements.

Before leaving school I took it upon myself to swap all the keyboards in Mr C’s room with the computer next door, turn the chairs upside-down in the office and swap round the monitors of two servers.

FRIDAY – The last day of school.

3:30am
I got up.

4:00am
I got a phone call from djkoa telling me he overslept and would be at mine at 4:30. No suprise there then ๐Ÿ˜‰

4:30am
Off we go to school, me dressed all in black, djkoa in his traditional muck-up day kit. We jump the school wall and creep through the car park in double quick time, trying to spot the security guard and dog, no sign of them except a security car parked inside the perimeter fence.

So next to the skip where we cunningly hid a ladder two days before. This was noisier than was hoped as a lot of junk had been heaped on top of it. Still no sign of a security guard we make a dash to the front of school and up goes the ladder.

djkoa passes me the vinyl sticker of the letter E he had printed the day before using the all important measurements and I begin to stick it down using a steel rule, occasionally jumping off the ladder to hide from passing cars. djkoa then moves in with his knife to pop a few air bubbles and do the final smoothing down. We take a few pictures then dash off to replace the ladder. A quick wave to the CCTV camera we just KNOW is either a dud or isn’t recording and off we go to jump in the getaway vehicle. It was over. Now to wait and see how long it will last…



More pictures will be posted here shortly.

5:00am
We went back to my house and ordered a domain name for djkoa. I then had a couple of hours sleep.

8:50am
The revised sign on the front of the school had lasted until the morning. As amusing as they found it, senior management decided that the letter E had to go and set their best brains on the tast, Mr L the assistant caretaker. Now as much as we love this guy he does occasionally do stupid things. Instead of carefully peeling off the sticker with the aid of white spirit like we had planned, he took it upon himself to use a wallpaper scraper and furniture polish. The result was that the “A” underneath the “E” was partially scraped off. OOPS, now we’re in trouble.

Next was double maths with fractions bingo and coffee, interrupted briefly by a conga of sixth form down the corridoor followed close behind by poor Mrs P (head of sixth form) who was closing all the doors behind them.

10:50am
djkoa had the fantastic idea of giving the staff room a disco. He placed one of the speakers from the school sound system on the fire escape stairs outside IT just above the open staff room window and rigged it up to his disco equipment. The staff were then treated to his cheesy disco music. lauperr and I made a large card board cow which we dangled in front of the window and made MOOing sounds into the microphone. Fantastic.

11:10
Next was the farewell assembly from the head of sixth form and the head teacher. I think the deputy head, Mr L, was too choked up to speak as he is also leaving this year. The speeches were traditionally boring in places, but some of it was genuinely touching and there were tears in the hall. The head handed his hankey to someone at the front, aww.

But then came our moment of glory. Dr M (the head) said that it was a good job that he had the architect in that morning. They were discussing a re-design of the front of the school. The reason this was a good thing was that the sign at the front had recently been defaced. I gave djkoa a nudge and we stood up to take a bow. There were cheers and applause. The head then went on to say that the local paper had rung him asking him if he knew that the front of the school had been defaced. He said yes. They had asked if he knew who had done it. He said no. But now he knew! Oops.

Towards the end of the speech Dr M joked that if anyone wanted to email him, remember that his name is spelt Stuart, not Stuert and the school’s name is spelt Grammar, not Grammer. Hehehe.

We stopped afterwards to talk to staff and were congratulated on our “intelligent” prank. It seemed the staff were not in fact annoyed about it all, they were impressed! They were also very thankful for the disco we gave them – “It’s the best break we’ve had in ages!”. Even Dr A was impressed with our prank.

The head was suprisingly understanding as we apologised for the permenant ๐Ÿ˜‰ damage. Everyone was collecting signatures and farewell wishes in little books, but lauperr decided to be different and collected hugs instead. Both me and lauperr got a hug from the head! w00t!

1:00pm
lauperr and I arrived at the pub to start our theoretical 13 hours of drinking. We started in Smiths but moved on when Charlie’s age was questioned. Mr T had dropped in for a quick beer amusingly. Good old chap! We then went off to the Angel. A few hours later people went home for their tea and after getting bored bumming around town lauperr and I nipped to my house for a quick kip followed by a mini hangover. Ick. A pizza soon got us back on our feet and back to the pub we went. Mr M and his wifey were there and we had another drinking sesh. After they had left Mr and Mrs C turned up to join the party. Mr C was confronted by an amusing drunk as laupperr described

We bid farewell to Mr and Mrs C after failing to convince them to come to Lesters Nightclub with us. It was a good job really because we didn’t get in. They wouldn’t let lauperr in without ID, despite having done so many many times before. To add insult to injury, during my refund they short changed me by ยฃ10!! I went back the next morning to claim it back, but they weren’t having any of it. Bar Stewards. This is particularly annoying as lauperr has a private party booked there in a couple of months.

I think this post is big enough, let’s start a new one.

Water Feature

Finally I get the chance to add pictures of the water feature in the IT rooms at school. For anyone who hasn’t follwed the story there was quite severe leak in the roof which involved ceiling tiles and water falling on top of a bunch of year 10s and their computers. Once the computers were safely moved out of the way, we decided it would make an attractive addition to the decor of the room.



Photos by black_wraith

Yes that is a “No Fishing” sign, genuine pond weed, a bamboo plant, a frog, ducks, chicks and decorative marble chips. The sign says “Year 13 water feature project”.

Yes they are mains sockets and ethernet sockets you can see and yes there is still water dripping all around that area. Several members of senior management have seen our attractive water feature project and had mixed feelings I think.

Amongst other strange goings on is a sofa which has appeared at the local park. Every day I go past it has moved. I can’t help but remember the part in H2G2 when a sofa kept appearing a field and have been tempted to jump on it to see if I get whisked into a parrallel dimension.

I briefly signed up to Black Nova Traders on iMen. I read all the FAQs and the beginners guide then starting browsing the galaxy quite a lot to get some raw data for an idea I had for mapping sectors and links. Unfortunately I accidentally followed a link to a sector with no link back at one point and got lost in the middle of the galaxy. I started to try to find my way home when I looked at the clock and noticed two hours had passed. For my own good I decided to plunge my ship (called hog (Heart of Gold)) into a sector full of fighter ships who quickly destroyed my ship. Phewf, I knew there was a reason I don’t play those games.

lauperr and I went to see a lovely blue and white VW camper for sale today. The type 2s aren’t as tall as I thought, they’re very cute. It was in pretty good condition but unfortunately they wanted nearly seven grand for it.

Excluding exams today was my last Monday at school, ever.

Webby awards

I’ve been having problems getting on to livejournal.com this evening. I don’t know if it has anything to do with them winning a webby award. Talking of webby awards, I’ve just been looking over the nominations and there’s someinteresting stuff there.

Particular web sites of interest include map24 – some neat software similar to multimap.com but cooler. iTunes won a couple of awards which I have mixed feelings about. I’m pleased that HowStuffWorks.com, Google and wikipedia got a look in.

But my personal favourite has to be The Access Project. This project won the webby award for net art and I love this kind of quirky thing. From the web site:

ACCESS is a public art installation that applies web, computer, sound and lighting technologies in which web users track individuals in public spaces with a unique robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system. The robotic spotlight automatically follows the tracked individuals while the acoustic beam projects audio that only they can hear. The tracked individuals do not know who is tracking them or why they are being tracked, nor are they aware of being the only persons among the public hearing the sound. The web users do not know that their actions trigger sound towards the target. In effect, both the tracker and the tracked are in a paradoxical communication loop.

They describe the result as artwork and I’m willing to go with that. Seeing as a breeze block with bird poo on it qualifies for art these days I think this more than gets the title. I think it’s thought provoking and clever and it weirded me out just watching it. The creators say they aim to raise awareness of “surveillance, detection, celebrity, and their impact on society”.

Moving on…

Me, djkoa and lauperr had our lunch in the park today, largely to give djkoa some fresh air because he stayed up ALL night finishing his Computing coursework! Laura fed the ducks and it was nice to be outside. Mr C didn’t crack as I thought he would ๐Ÿ˜›

lauperr and I went to feed the ducks (and evil nasty black swans) this evening as well then went for a drive. We saw a barn owl and a hodgeheg ๐Ÿ˜›

I’m getting increasingly bitter about the dates for Bourne Festival. During a dinner with the organisers, the Round Table, months and months ago, djkoa and I along with a friend,Libby, brought up the point that the festival is right in the middle of AS level and A-level exams and possibly before the GCSEs finish. This means the festival will be excluding a LOT of teenagers in Bourne which is just not fair. djkoa and I both helped out Nick Gomm with the sound and lighting for about five days which was lots and lots of fun! This year we can’t help out and I’ve found out tonight that Nick still doesn’t have any commited help for this year. Hopefully next year I will have the time to commit and I’ll be able to do it again.

Not wanting to end on a negative note, let’s think of something else. I signed up toe Friends Reunited today, perhaps a little prematurely. Looking at the page about Bourne Grammar I’m already getting nostalgic and I haven’t even left yet! I’m planning on putting up notices to encourage our year group to sign up so we can keep in touch. Only a week to go.

Friends Reunited have this cool system for making an avatar called weemee. This is mine:

Finished Computing Coursework

It’s done. The last piece of coursework I will ever do at this school. Over. Just under 100 pages. So, on to the next thing then, maths I think.

bouncykaz just showed me this animation which is pretty funny. The end is nigh.

lauperr made me smile a lot today. She randomly took Penny for a walk which was one of the things. She also bought me some milk… damn I forgot to give her her ยฃ4 back for the folder. She’s been reading my copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again, hope she finishes it soon caus I want to read it again!

djkoahas finally start to come round to the fact that kewlistic radio are a bunch of incompetent, offensive fools. this may have something to do with it!

mchicago is having a VERY important interview – hope it goes well.

Google started an official blog using their newly aquired toy, blogger.com which has seen a makeover to its site. Still doesn’t really compete with LiveJournal in my view though. Better name though ๐Ÿ˜›

wonchop had his 18th today, woooo! look forward to the party.

aaaand now I must go to bed.

Searching for buses

Computing coursework is going well.

For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m doing – I’m designing a search system to help you find a bus to go where you want to go. I’m using tralk (the PII L.A.M.P. web server sitting next to me) to host a PHP/MySQL web based system where a user can come along, tell the web page where they want to go from and and to, the day and time on which they want to travel and they will get a list of possible buses to catch.

It was handed in for a look over yesterday and so far I’m looking at very high marks. I just need to get the user manual finished and some tweaks to the design section, then I can concentrate on some maths.

Feeling quite ill today, possibly through lack of sleep. Must get on…

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

Last night lauperr and I made a list of things we’d like to do next year and it will be interesting to see which of them actually happen. I then fell asleep to some sweet sounds crafted by Paul Avgerinos and slept exceptionally well considering everything going on at the moment.

This evening the fox visited the back garden again and stayed around for a long time. I looked out into the garden from an upstairs window and noticed how wonderful it looks at this time of year with everything springing into life. The fox was sat there eating under the apple tree and I watched the horses in the field behind the house as the sun set.

I’m glad I’m going to be able to stay here for another year, I really do love this place. People give Bourne a lot of stick for being boring and having nothing to do, but it’s my home and I’m perfectly happy to stay around a little longer ๐Ÿ™‚ Besides, how can I leave my wonderful bedroom behind? ๐Ÿ˜›

Coursework is still dragging on and my first exam is in just over two weeks – it’s stressful. But at the moment at least I’m feeling pretty good about it. It’s quite comfortable to know that my plans next year don’t rely on my results and it will be really good to get out of education for a bit and do something a little different, something I may learn more from in the long run.

I’ve been looking into an intensive driving course to get me on the roads. I’m still not overly keen on putting another car (with me in it!) on the roads to be honest, but I really do need to be more mobile. So that will be happening after the exams are over.

So for now I go back to the long slog. Only a couple of months before it’s all over.

white wash

In a moment of madness I gave my desktop a white wash – a change from the normal dark gloomy theming and matrix and anime wallpapers (screenshot). I am developing the art of wasting time to a yet unseen level. Oh how I miss fluxbox, only 2 months to go and I can re-liberate my desktop with Debian.

Friday night was oh so cool with djkoa, lauperr and kes with pizza and videos and a house to ourselves. We had a good laugh at the Windows XP action and the “latest technology” web cams in the film, Three Blind Mice. Not really a great film but good for a laugh (possibly worrying as one of the core themes is murder).

The rest of the weekend was spent with lauperr housesitting. Much fun had, some music making, photography, coursework, dodgy food and another film, Cypher. Again an average film. Funksome weekend.

After my 48 hour coursework stint to get my DT coursework finished by the “final final final” deadline I found out today it hasn’t even been sent off yet! [insert obscene cursing here]

Computing coursework is the stress of the week. I had a “constructive conversation” (:P) with Mr M and Mr C after school about Normalisation. Mr M started the conversation which went roughly (:P) as follows…

Mr M: Ben, your normalisation is wrong.
Me: It is? I went by what it says in the text book.
Mr M: In that case, the text book is wrong too.
Me: Right.
[some skim reading]
Mr C: Well that’s what it says in the other text book too…
Mr M: Yes, it’s written by the same person. They’re both wrong.
Me: *grumble*
Mr C: What about this one? This one says the same as the other two.
Mr M: Oh. Well that one must be wrong too. There’s no hope.
Me: *grumble*
Mr M: OK?
Me: Not really.

After a long and drawn out discussion we decided I didn’t really have it majorly wrong at all and with some minor adjustments it would be fine. Although it did pose the question: Do I do what my teacher (who marks it) thinks is right, or what the text book (recommended by the examining board with moderates it) thinks is right? Personally I think they’re both wrong and normalisation should be banned. Someone please remind me to avoid Database modules when I do my CS degree. It’s my fault really for choosing a vaguely interesting project which hasn’t been done a million times before.

Anyway, things are coming along slowly and I’m wishing July would hurry up so I can have a nervous break down in peace.

lauperr: myello my loverrrr…

Google’s IPO

Google has just announced it has filed its IPO, for $2.7 billion no less and will become a public company.

A letter from the founders claims big things about how the company will not change for the worse now they are no longer a private company. I hope they turn out to be true.

I see there being a risk this is the beginning of Google turning evil, with the interests of their share holders above those of their users. We really don’t want them to do that. Everyone trusts Google, every geek loves Google and google has even become a verb. Can the founders really become billionaires and still not be evil?

I’ll shut up now before I start rambling about the information they have at their fingertips and what it could do in the wrong hands.

Vigila et Ora – Watch and Pray
(quick wink to all the BGS people out there)

Finished DT Coursework

w00t! it almost killed me, but I got there in the end. Now I just have to finish Computing too…

Apologies for my rambling last night, but I don’t think djkoa‘s comment was really called for, he talks much more bollocks than I do. OK so he doesn’t talk about moles in relation to exams or journey of self discovery, but he does come up with some pretty novel concepts none the less. And that’s when he hasn’t been deprived of sleep!

As a congratulations to myself for finishing my coursework, I let myself play with my Live Journal settings. I now have separate pages for friends and feeds. But don’t worry, the novelty will soon wear off and I’ll get bored of reading headlines from different sites in my less-than-brilliant friends template (which isn’t W3C compliant btw and is annoying in text based browsers) and all will return to normal service.

I found out that UserFriendly does actually have an LJ feed, but it’s currently broken… shame

lauperr seems to have experienced a lot of different moods today, ranging from bouncing across the supermarket with chocolate buttons to crying in her room. I hope she’s ok, I think she feels like people are taking advantage of her. WE ALL LOVE YOU LAURA!

Right, now I get down to some maths. I may let you know tomorrow what I’m trying to do with a small water pump, some pond weed, a bag of gravel, a no fishing sign and a rubber duck…