Tuesday 27th April 2004
Song: Delta Goodrem - Not Me, Not I
Ahoy. it's been a while.
Not much particularly exciting has happened really... Probably just a lot of trips to the pub, masses of guilt without good reason, a few cries of insanities from others, and a bit of excercise.
Matt and I decided to walk home from Pirbright the other day... We'd got a lift there from Marc, to play basketball and then decided to walk home. For those who don't know, Pirbright is two villages away from where I live... three from Matt. So we set off... there's basically two roads out of Pirbright in the direction we wanted. They come out of either end of the very long road that is the lovely village of Brookwood. While debating over which road to go down... Matt spots this small, single lane, road more or less between them. Neither of us knew where it went... so we decided to find out. There were a lot of expensive looking, posh person's houses, and... nothing else. This road we'd picked was a dead end, that was just a road to get to these houses. But wait... there's a gate here. We curiously open the gate (it wasn't locked) to see where it goes. It turns out, we were now in Brookwood Cemetry, and for those who don't know, Brookwood Cemetry is fucking huge. So we're now walking down this road that's about three times wider than the one we've just come off, in amongst a shit laod of dead people. It was actually quite interesting in a way, to see how many different types of graves there were. There were some really nice marble looking ones, some with just a marble looking headstone, others with a more basic stone headstone, some were flat on the ground, some were raised. There was one that looked pretty much like a DIY job. No headstone, and but judging by the height of the lump where the body was, it looked like this person was about 6 inches underground, and they'd just piled the mud over him. It didn't look freshly done, but there was no grass growing on the mud either. It was just... a mess. Kind'a sad in a way, as the rest of them all looked quite nice. It was such a peaceful place though... dead silent (hang on... there's a joke there, sorry) and no one else around. I also had no weirdness about walking around a load of dead people. I was respectful and didn't walk over them, but didn't find it at all weird. But anyway... we were more or less still trying to get home. So we kept walking, neither of us knowing our way round the place, we eventually see a building on the left, and head towards it. After a minute or so of walking towards it, we're finally at it, and we see a little door in the side... as we get nearer. It all clicks and I realise where we are (the cemetry covers a shit load of ground, not all in one place). We'd come in the back door of Brookwood train station. The door I'd always seen but never had a need to go through. By this point we're completely knackered as we'd been playing basketball and then spent 20 mins, or more, walking. So we quickly head towards the pub just outside Brookwood station. Had a quick rest, and a lot to drink. We then move on. For those keeping up with me, you should know that we're now approximately half way back to my house. So on we go... all goes normally from here. Matt then spots a gap in a fence on the other side of the road we're walking down (the A322) so of course once again we go through it. A few steps later we're standing in some huge open area of grass. It was like we'd stepped out of Woking entirely... In reality though, we were not far from Sainsbury's in Knaphill/Brookwood. A bit of walking and we found a road that was a lil' cul-de-sac type thing for the new houses they'd built by Sainsbury's. After getting lost in these roads (no... really) we eventually got out to Sainsbury's and back on a road we know, and came home via the chip shop. I wasn't actually *that* tired by this point, all things considered.
Last night, Matt, myself, and my brother were meant to be going ice skating with our bar staff friends, Rob and Jay. I don't really know why... I wasn't involved in the aranging of it. The ice skating rink (at Guildford) didn't open to the public until 8:45pm, and they were bored, so we ended up going to Pirbright at around 6 or 6:30 or something. We then had a few hours to kill, so we went to play basketball for a bit. Matt, myself, my brother and Rob. It passed a bit of time, none of us were really that good. Rob then got lured in by the kids play area. So we walk over to it, where we ensue to have far too much fun on the round-a-bout thing. We then moved on to some rocking horse thing that I can't be bothered to describe but that I'm sure didn't exist when I was a kid. We wasted probably quite a while there... which probably isn't a good sign since i was the youngest person there, at 18. Anyway, we finally got to Guildford. The whole evening went really well. None of us were too confident at first, despite Matt having been talking the talk all night and seeming very cocky and confident about how well he can skate. But once he got on the ice, it was unsurprisingly not as easy as he'd expected. It took my brother far too long before he finally let go of the wall, and unfortunately was the worst of us all. Rob and Jay picked it up very quickly since they're from Austraiia where the word "ice" probably isn't mentioned too often. Matt and I, both with previous skating experience also picked it up fairly quickly, though neither as good as we apparently used to be. I didn't like the fact the skates they give you have no blade at all, so I didn't wanna lean too much. But I soon got the hang of picking up speed, and more importantly: stopping. By the time we left, I'd also got the hang of crossing over my legs, when going round corners. That'll probably only make sense to anyone with skating experience. I'd just like to say finally because I'm proud... I was the only person to have not fallen over. I think Rob and Jay fell once, Matt twice, and my brother three times. A good time was had though. :)
Finally, before I wrap this up and go and moan about food and go to watch The Osbournes, and Ally McBeal, I have one more thing to say. Last semester, in my programming classes, there were these two people going round, helping out people who needed it. Presumably because there's more people needing help than one lecturer can deal with. (Programming's not easy to learn, I assure you). I have a feeling I may have mentioned these helper people to one or more of you, as I quite liked one of them... he was well over 6 feet tall, had a mohawk that changed colours most weeks, had orange eyebrows, and his t-shirts' fronts varied between Camden and UNIX. Anyway... today I was asked if I'd like to be one of those helper people for next year's first years. I had a quite proud/ego growing moment, and of course accepted, on the condition it doesn't interfere with my other classes. Which I assumed it wouldn't anyway, but thought I should check. The only downside to it, was that they're teaching Java next year, and I have not a single bit of Java experience... but I'm confident I'll pick up the basics fairly quickly. Don't expect this site to be filled with a snooker Java game anytime soon, but simple stuff should be easy enough... I've read tutorials and such in the past on it, and I'm doing it next year at uni anyway. The lecturer who asked me this said they'd be doing a few days cram course thing on it to bring us up to scratch on it anyway. So, it sounded quite good to me. :)
I've been called for food now... so I shall leave you. Hope the length of this has made up for my absence.
Saturday 17th April 2004
Song: Pink - Last To Know
After the first two singles from Pink's new album, Try This, I was reluctant to get a copy of it (legally, or otherwise). However, the most recent single to be released, Last To Know, reminded me of why I liked Pink originally... So I decided to obtain a copy of this album this afternoon. I've just finished listening to it all the way through *pets iPod* and am generally very impressed. In this new light, even "Trouble" and "God Is A DJ" don't seem as bad as they did originally. I'd recommend this album to anyone who liked Pink's last album.
Today was odd... after getting up fairly late and then showering, it was near enough midday before my day began. This is my idea of a good start to a day. I began the day with chips and Friends (Paper? Snow? A ghost!?). It wasn't too long before Matt was bored enough to contact me to do something. He came round here, but I met him halfway. That passed about 30 mins or so. I then made him watch Friends, after saying "Paper? Snow? A ghost!?" several times on the way home, and by around 4:30, we left here and went to Pirbright armed only with a basketball and two mobile phones. Conversation was surprisingly good, and by around 6:10 we were discussing what to do next. We were both in favour of walking up to the pub (shocking?) but as I said, we both only had a phone... no money. I called my mum, and arranged some money for me, along with Matt's wallet and other stuff to be brought to us. We walked up to the pub, and felt like I was pushing my luck a bit, but asked for two drinks, on the promise that money would be arriving soon. After Rob (the barman) laughed at me, and two other people sitting at the bar taking the piss out of what they seemed to think was a joke/poor excuse and failing to see how honest I was being... I did eventually get these drinks. It was nearer 30 minutes before money arrived in the end (not hugely surprising, really). By around 7 or 7:30, a phone call to Tor was made, and he said he'd be coming down to see us. Marc also said he'd be joining us too. Some time between 8 and 8:30 Tor phoned asking for the post code, for his route planner thing. By 8:30, my brother and Marc had turned up. Around 9:30, Tor arrived, then the computer conversation far surpassed the car converstion, much to my delight. I'm not normally geeky enough to want to talk about computers for long amounts of time, especially in public. But after months and months of hearing about the same car modifications... lower suspension, louder sound systems, and go faster number plates, it was a delight to talk about linux clusters, Microsoft's usage of BSD code in Windows 3.11, and kernel compile times. It wasn't long before my brother left... but Marc bravely sat, quite quietly, through it all. By 11:30, we were being asked to leave by the landlord, and so we got up to go. Was quite a nice evening though.
Completely different topic: It's interesting how people change... When at college, I made two friends who will remain nameless. They had become quite good friends throughout the second year, towards the end of the second year, and a lot more over that summer holiday, the three us of all became very good friends (despite the big knife to the back that I recieved from one, that I let go surprisingly well). We were talking once at some early hour of the morning in one of their back garden's about how people change and grow apart with age. We both accepted that it'd happen to us, but also expected to still be talking for a few years to come. By the half term of the first semester of uni, we had an evening in Kingston that I generally didn't enjoy too much. The evening was filled with conversations about how things are going for them at uni, people they've met, things they've done, amount they've drunk. I wasn't completely alienated, but it wasn't the same as it had been 6 months before. By Christmas, I think we saw each other once in Woking for a drinkey, but that was all. This Easter holiday has passed by without even the mention of meeting up, and conversation on MSN has long run dry, and barely happens anymore. It is a mutual feeling though. I don't miss the past, nor regret anything that's led us to where we are now. Especially now I'm settled in at uni. It's just interesting how quickly we fell apart. Makes me think about things...
I'm just thinking now... whether or not this ties in with what I said about Charlotte last time. I sent her an e-mail, with no subject or greeting, and of which the body was "I miss you" and the farewell of "*huggles*" and I got quite a long reply from her (which hardly ever happens) completed with an reminder that she loves me... it made me smile and reminded me of how things with me and her always are. We spoke for just over an hour on the phone last night again, which was nice. She's gonna be moving to London quite soon. It will be very interesting to see how that goes with regards to us. She asked me earlier to promise her that I'll visit and the like, which I of course did... it'll just be interesting to see how much the physical distance affects us. Everytime we've grown distant, we've always ended up back in each others' arms sooner or later. However, if she's gonna be in North London, that will no longer be so easy... so we'll see. Can't honestly say I'm looking forward to her going, but I know it's what she wants, so am happy for her etc.
Finally I thought I'd share this. Please be aware :)
Wednesday 14th April 2004
Song: Dido - Don't Leave Home
Y'know what I really hate about the iPod? Far too much choice. Instead of being bored with what's on my MP3 player and wanting someone to moan to about it, I now have no idea what to listen to 'cause I have far too much there.
I think I'm finally regaining the knack of getting the basketball to get through the hoop. I'd be lying if I said that I have a success rate of over 50%, but I can see it improving!
I'm so fucking tired, and bored shitless. Sadly only made one trip to the pub today. I felt bad, having been there twice per day for the last few days. There too often? Maybe... but there's not a lot else for me to do really. Last night was interesting, was there for approximately 5 and a half hours (that was just the evening) and had a nice conversation about ficticious things that are heard of, but never seen. Like Robin Hood, The Loch Ness Monster, and female multiple orgasms. Conversation had it's bloke-ish moments which I tended to sit quietly through, but we also had really good (mature/sensible) conversation too. Stuff I don't wanna write about here though...
I need to get started on some uni work, for the nightmare module at some point... I went so far as getting a book on SQL from Woking Library the other day, but I've not really read it much, but I really think I should. I slept around 5 hours last night, woke up at 6:30. It's been a VERY long day. I aim to sleep a lot of tomorrow morning.
I've been quite snappish to a few people lately... for this, I apologise. However I'm just getting a bit tired of certain things, and meh... I dunno. I don't really want to get into that here either. I am troubled...
I've decided that John Cage and Richard FIsh amuse me greatly. Despite the fact they're both ficticious, they're both the sort of people I'd like to be friends with... though the waddle fettish is a bit odd. But hey... bygones :)
I've not spoken to Charlotte in a few days... it seems kind of odd. I miss her. It just seems odd that a few days is such a big deal. Mmm.
I dunno why I bother having this when I hold back from so much stuff. Uhm... I think I should go to bed soon.
Sunday 11th April 2004
Song: Tura Satana - Relapse
Just testing some new changes... In a rush, wont write much else.
My apologies to those who've tried to look at my site and had to wait 30 seconds for it to load. There's been a lot of lag on this conncetion lately, and no one really knows why.
What's green and eats nuts?
Thursday 8th April 2004
Song: Sum 41 - Thanks For Nothing
I had a really horrible dream this morning... I can't remember it all, but it involved me and my mum both crying a lot and she was trying to kill herself along with the rest of the family. There was a point to it all, but unfortunately I can't remember it now. One other thing I do remember though, was towards the end of it, I became concious that it was a dream, while still in the dream (bear with me here). I've done this many times in the past. Usually during nightmares just when I'm near waking up. I somehow regain control of my concious while the dream still goes on in my subconcious. I have in the past used this to wake myself up 'cause as I said, it's normally during nightmares and I generally want them to end as soon as possible. So anyway... I was at some point in the dream where I was unable to breathe. It's not uncommon for this to happen to me in dreams. The horrible thing though is that when I wake up I feel like I've been holding my breath for ages. I don't know if my face is just down into the pillow or something, and I literally can not breathe, or if I'm just unconciously holding my breath... I have no idea. But anyway, I got to this point in the dream where I can't breathe which isn't uncommon for me (I've had dreams of being stuck underwater, with ice on the surface, and always wake up just before I drown and such) and I'm aware that it's just a dream, so I try and wake myself up. It works... Then suddenly I'm taking a huge breath... but I'm still not awake. But I'm no longer crying with my mum in her arms. I'm breathing normally, no longer in that dream, still conciously aware that it's a dream, so I try again to wake myself up (can't really explain how... I just sort of do it, though in the past I've managed to rub my eyes a lot to achieve this) and then I wake up. Still a little out of breath, and panting a bit. But at least I was awake at last. I was a little shaken up by all this as the nested dreams had been so real. A few of you may recall a bit back I wrote a bit about a dream I'd had where I was crying, and I'd woken up and felt like I'd been crying hard for a long time... well I didn't have that this morning. All of the crying was strictly in the dream... very odd... That's all I have to say about that. :)
Today has been quite nice, once that was over with. I began the day with a shower, followed closely by a KFC for breakfast. I was then off out with my mum, iPod shopping. We went to Woking, Brooklands, and then to Guildford, where they finally had one in stock. I am very pleased with the little beauty. I need to get a firewire card for my Windows computer though... Shopping again tomorrow for that. Just out of curiosity, Sonia and Kim (can someone ask her if they remember, 'cause she doesn't read this) do you use firewire or USB for it? I went on my dad's laptop and filled it up with a few albums. It's now back on charge. :)
Anyway, after I'd got that and quickly got home. I had stuff planned. A few of you may recall that I've been going to a pub on Pirbright far too much lately. Well we've pretty much got to know the barstaff, and today I had plans to see the bar staff outside of working hours, which in itself to me seemed quite odd... The day on the whole went fine, we attempted to play basketball for a while where we got about 5 shots in between all of us. Then we went back to the pub for a bit. Went in the back door, coming out behind the bar which in itself seemed odd, having spent so much time on the other side of it. Then we played some pool (for free!) and just sat around talking for a bit.
I had a weird thought though, stemming from this afternoon. I spent some time at uni a bit back sitting at a table with two other people. Our combined age was 77. This in itself didn't seem at all odd to me though... these two other people that I was sitting with, and talking to were people I'd met at uni and had got to know as students. Today I was with these two people who are younger than the two I was with at uni, but yet I look up to them as older people. It just made me wonder about age and stuff... It really does make no difference. I can only assume that because I'd met these people at uni as students like myself, I viewed them on the same level as myself. i remember two occasions wehre I've spent about 20 mins or so (at a guess) in the office of one of my lecturers from last semester who I'm sure is younger than the two afore mentioned friends (though I've never asked). Yet because she was a lecturer and not a student, she wasn't placed on the same level as me, in my mind. I don't really know where I am going with this... It was just a thought I had that I decided to share.
In a way it still seems odd that I hang around with people >20 years old. I've always been the young one. There aren't many 18 year olds left in my academic year, though I know there are a few. I've reluctantly accepted that most of my friends from my academic year are going to be 20 this calender year. (I don't wanna be old!) But in a way it still seems odd that so quickly I've been thrust into the real world, where age does't matter. Makes me think of how when you're in year 9, the prospect of going out with someone in year 10 was a completely foreign idea... where as a lot of married couples have a few years between their ages. I dunno... I'm just babbling now. I intended this to be one of my more interesting updates, but I think I fell short. Sorry folks, maybe another day. :)
Wednesday 7th April 2004
I've just made a new page. I don't know how many people are realistically gonna want this. The reason for making it was just because I had the old entries stored in the database still, but only ever show the most recent 10 on the front page. While I could delete the old ones... I thought I've always kept them, so thought I'd try and use them. It's entirely dynamic so I'm hoping that it will maintain itself as the months (and possibly years) tick by.
I'm quite fond of it, but haven't yet figured out how to place it on the navigation bar. If anyone has any ideas... please let me know.
Monday 5th April 2004
Song: Audio Learning Center - Winter
Not sure if anyone cares or not... but it made me smile, so I wanted to share this with you all. :)
I've just finished this. Could you all please download and play. I need to know of any problems. If the game is simply not being played as you think it should, if the computer cheats, if you think you can cheat, or even any spelling or grammer problems, Mary. ;) I got confused by the placement of some of the apostrophes.
"Computer's cards' value"?
Anywho, lemme know of any problems please.
Oh, right... so you wanna know what it is? It's pontoon. The card game... I'm hoping you all know how to play it (even I did, and I had no childhood) If not, here we go: Basically, the aim is to get a total value of 21, or as close to it as you can, without going over. The suits make no difference at all. Picture cards (king, queen and jack) are all worth 10. Aces can be worth 1 or 11 (some times the game decides for you which to use... can't remember when it does and when it doesn't though). if you get over 21, you lose. Same for the computer player. "Twist" means "Gimme another card", "stick" means "I'll stick..." (that's a hard one for newbies to grasp). If you get for example 20, you'd be wise to stick as the chances of you getting an ace are slim. Hopefully that'd make sense...
I've checked over my code fairly thoroughly now, and am quite happy with it... however it's not all my code. In the event that you get the same card drawn twice in one game (which obviously with a real pack of cards isn't possible) please, please, PLEASE let me know. The code for the card dealing came from uni and I looked at it, and am not convinced that it works right. Infact I'm pretty sure it doesn't work at all...
Completely different... but I recommend that people read this. It's quite sad, but real, so... Give it a read, and see what you think.
Friday 2nd April 2004
Song: Mest - Burning Bridges
Ahh, my legs hurt. Went out for a bit earlier, played basketball for another 30 mins or so, we just stopped 'cause it was getting too dark to see the ball. I then went and sat on a bar stool for about three hours straight. When I eventually got up, my legs decided they weren't gonna move properly. Dear God it was a struggle. My hip area on my right leg ached a bit today once I got home (I walked from Woking) but that went away once we started playing, but apparently 30 mins of excercise and then 3 hours of sitting isn't good.
I went into a book shop earlier, to look for a joke book I'd had recommended to me, and it was bloody funny. I've had a joke overload lately, and am useless at remembering them anyway.
What do a gynecologist and a pizza delivery man have in common?
They both get to smell the goods, but don't get to taste them
I'll not write anymore here as they're too offensive. Oh, hah, I have to share this one... it made me laugh so much. You'll have to read the end bits in a Jamaican accent in your head for it to sound right (you'll know which bits) as unfortunately it's a joke that needs to be spoken. Here it is:
There is a fancy dress party, and you have to dress up as an emotion to get in. The girl throwing it didn't want any uninvited people crashing it, so she got two bouncers for it. She gave them the instructions that all guests must be dressed like an emotion. So these two bouncers stand at her door, and this guy comes up, he's dressed in all green. The bouncers stop him, and say "You can't come in dressed like that" to which the guy replied, "but I'm green with envy" so the bouncers looked at each other and agreed he was ok, so they let him in. About 30 minutes later, there was a guy all in red, and again they stopped him. "Sorry, can't come in... gotta be dressed as an emotion", so the guy says "I'm red with anger". Again, the bouncers think that's ok, and let him in. Shortly afer that are these two jamaicans. One has a pear on his dick and the other has his dick in a bowl of custard. The bouncers stop them at the door too, and says "Hold up, there's no WAY you guys are dressed as emotions". One of the Jamaicans replies "But my mate is deep in dis pear and i am fucking dis custard"
Thursday 1st April 2004
Song: The Starting Line - Given The Chance
Uni was pointless today. Thursdays are usually useless, as I have a few years of using unix full time, learning about it isn't all that much fun... but today was exceptionally bad. I went this morning, and we had a workshop, in which we're expected to be making shell scripts. At this point I should confess that I did actually learn something today, but it was still quite boring. Spend more time playing with bluetac and moaning about vi on others' behalf than doing anything else. Talked to someone to my right and read some foul jokes that I've since forgotten. The afternoon's lecture was cancelled. So... it seemed at that point like a wasted day. The afternoon then got more interesting. We had a group meeting regarding the module that's turned into a complete nightmare, though I wont get into the details on this most public of mediums for several reasons. We ended up splitting up, and I walked with Tor back to the canteen at which point we came across a member of my group from the afore mentioned nightmare module. The three of us sat and chatted for a bit, then she went off, and Tor and I stayed for another hour or so, talking. Was an interesting chat... I was hungry but knew if I went I'd just be bored at home.
This evening, i've been out for a bit, to play basketball. Since most of the readers of this site (I think all, actually) haven't known me that long, it may come as some surprise to you that I actually used to play sports quite frequently. Several years have passed since then, and well frankly I'm a bit shit now. But hey, I hope to get better again by playing more frequently. It did quite kill me though... after about 30 minutes of playing I was knackered, and in the end decided to go to the pub (yeah, real athletic of us, I know). So we had a nice chat with out ol' barman friend about sexual fetishes and Ozzy Osbourne, then we had to go as the people I was with had plans.
Was talking to Daniel about our current programming assignment yesterday, and I'm now terrified of it. I've been up to this point, terribly cocky about it, and keep putting it off, but I really think I should start that soon... sounds bloody hard. Apparently gotta write a function to edit a binary tree. It needs to let the user select a node (not a problem) search through the tree (also not a problem, I believe at least one reader has sone binary searches before) but then it needs to be able to remove that node from the tree. The node removal code it quite easy, but we've got to somehow relink the tree back together, so that the removed node's children don't get lost in memory. So yeah... it'll be interesting to see if anyone actually manages that. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge, in the most geeky way possible.
I gotta go now... Charlotte's about to phone. G'bye people!