Back to Aber…

Now with emphasis, for your garnering-the-important-points pleasure

…For those of you not yet up with the latest creation of the Lame-O Plan-a-Tron 2000 ™, I’m heading over to Aber on Saturday.

Then I’m going back to Newport sometime during Monday, and I plan to stay there for around about a week…

Then, after a suitable period of hiding (to give people in Aber time to think “Nah, it must’ve been a false alarm, let’s cancel all security) I’m going back to Aber once more, to hang about, make a nuisance of myself, get up people’s noses, and hopefully eat all the curry on Portland Road. and hanging about until somewhere in the region of the 28th.

Please note that, whilst in Aber, I’m likely to be crashing at the Cottage. Please also note that whilst away from Wallingford, I’m not likely to be about much on IRC. (I’m never on Gaim to speak to people via MSN anyway, so that’s irrelevant.) E-mails, however, I get from all over the shop, on a regular basis, so that’s a good way to get in touch with me, if you need to.

And if it’s an emergency, or you’re getting desperate withdrawral symptoms having missed the dulcet sound of my voice, you can give me a ring on my mobile, the number for which you’ll already know if you need it.

Ah… the joys of sounding organised. Also of buggering those programs that read web pages for blind people.
In other news:

“You are lucky! Full moon tonight!” my arse. I’ve played 20 characters, today, and they all died. Bloody RNG.

Heh. Potential trivia for Troma Night folks…

…So Ruth & I were drinking a magnum of champagne (now about 1/2 gone, and we’ve been at it for about six hours…) & watching Futurama.

Series 2, ep. 8-ish, “Raging Bender” – don’t know if you guy’s have registered this already, but dig out the episode and play “Spot Crow & Tom Servo” in the cinema”.

Just felt the need the spread the comedy cross-referencing goodness.

Have fun!

That was a good celebration. Now what…?

Yesterday was, uh, really good.

OK, it started with the destruction of a 21-year record; I woke up with a hangover, which was a new and broadly foul experience – turns out I’m fine drinking borderline silly quantities of beer, wine, Black Mountain, Mead, Cider, etc…. Give me a quater of a bottle of 1999 Moet & Chandon, on the other hand, and I wake up with a headache. What a cruel world…

On the other hand, some tea and Anadin fixed me up after a couple of hours, and in the evening I headed over to Oxford to meet up with Ruth and see what could be done in terms of celebrating.

“What could be done” transpired to be LaserQuest (I blame this entirely on LaserQuest getting features in Sunday’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, causing Ruth to say “LaserQuest! That’s what we need to do!” and then spend the rest of the week finding somewhere.

But, yeah, it was good fun. Much better than the thoroughly naff place in Stafford (which, keeen to fit in with everthing else in Staffordshire, was a bit rubbish) – if you look at this map, and turn it upside down, (ie, rotate it 90 degrees twice, not just flip it) then that was the map…

…And, yeah. We had two, er, interesting games. As we queued up we espied a group of smallish children ahead of us, accompanied by a parentish dude. And boy did the little buggers whip us.

We didn’t, y’see, prepare for any species of tactics from the kids, merely anticipating them running about like scattered easy prey. Fat chance. Firstly, they’d been there before, and knew the course, which we didn’t. Secondly they worked as a group, giving each other cover all the time and yelling things like “Help me over here!” and “I’ve found one!” Clever little sods…

…Out of nine, Ruth came fifth, and I was seventh. That was fairly humiliating.

The second game, however, we did much better, since we knew what we were doing by then. We teamed up with the parental dude against the kiddies, (no strict teams, they were both FFA matches) and we knew both the way round and that the kids weren’t too bad. At one lovely point, Ruth & I were basically pinned down in the red base by about four of ’em, and we held them off for a good few minutes, mincing them all the time – strangely they didn’t send someone round the side to knock us offline… not so clever with the tactics now, huh? …

…I almost wish we weren’t so proud of that…

…Also, by then, three other guys had turned up, and they just had no tactics whatsoever. So the second game we did really well and out of twelve, Ruth came third and I came second. And the kid calling himself “TTTUUPPPP” won both of the games, so that was really quite cool.

Then we all headed our seperate ways (with the parent-ish guy saying “See you next week,” which was cool) and Ruth & I went for tapas, which I’ve no had before, but which is amazingly nice, and we had a really friendly waiter dude, which was cool. So, aye, that was yesterday. All much rockingness.

And now it’s the weekend, hooray!

So, yeah…

…I’ve got a job! This is all muchly fantastic, since it’s not only a job, but a job I can actually do and still have an income left after travel expenses with which to purchase foodstuffs and other semi-essentials. Hooray!

My magic interviewing skills continue to be, uh, fairly good; I’ve now got something like a 4-in-4 hit rate of making people want to give me a job, which is very encouraging, especially for my ego, which likes to be fed every now and then.

Heh. I suspect I shall presently go in search of champagne…

Have fun!

Today I have…

…Played Green Dragon, watched Pocoyo, opened a valve under a mansion that caused the whole thing to blow up in a vast return-to-title-sequence nuclear explosion, drunk a large ammount of coffee, taken two phone calls from Newport…

…And sat about twiddling my thumbs waiting for a) a package I’m expecting and b) feedback from Friday’s interview. I’m only posting this for something to do…
Hey ho.

08.17.05Ugh. The Oxford public library runs IE on the terminals…

…And, yep, that’s near as dammnit the same title of the last post I made from a PC-where-I-can’t-add-a-decent-browser.

 Like I said, last August’s posts rocked.

 Meanwhile, back in The Present…

Just had (another) job interview. I really do hope I get this one; not least because I’m getting just a little tired of doing interviews (suit, tie, shiny shoes, briefcase [thank-you, darling], umberella [thank-you, darling], back at the usual time? [Of course], have a nice time at the interview… and so on…)

Good God, IE loads pages slowly…

No, but I am rather eager to get this job, it’s got an actual chance of leading onto something (as opposed to, say, a life of making pretty window displays, and little to hope for but saving the store manager’s life from a falling sign, or something…).

 Well, let’s see what the day brings forth.

I’m now hanging on in Oxford for evensong at Christ Church, and then I’m heading back to Wallingford. Went bellringing yesterday, or, rather, I went up the tower of St. Mary-le-More and watched everyone else making it look suspiciously easy. I’m heading over a bit early next week so I can start learning to handle a bell, which sounds horribly complicated, but still, it gives me something to do.

At the weekend, I’m apparently going to Reading, to look after two small boys for a day, which is marginally a new one, but could be worse.

Feeling hugely tired, hardly slept for a solid hour last night, kept waking up. Gave up at 0500h and dug out my iriver and listened to that whilst I dozed. Didn’t help.

 Hey ho. In other news, er…

…Well, not much, if I’m quite honest with you. Life at the moment seems to have degenerated into one big round of looking for jobs, going to interviews, and then either not getting them (I’m still, theoretically, waiting to hear from the area manager at Allen & Harris; I’d think having got me to go to interview, even a simple rejection letter would be a common courtesy) or finding out they’re in Banbury at a time I can’t possibly get to Banbury.

Ah well. No doubt thing’s’ll contrive to perk up presently; if I get the thoroughly spiffy job I’ve just interviewed for, then I’m set. That would be unbelievably excellent, of course, but we’ll see how we go.

Have fun!

Huh. An’ I thought “I’ll play as a Samurai for a bit and then get fed up…”

*sigh*

Sayonara Jem Harra the Samurai…

You were poisoned in Ghennom on dungeon level 33 with 1034276 points,
and 141 pieces of gold, after 53072 moves.
You were level 15 with a maximum of 130 hit points when you were poisoned.

Final Attributes:

• You were piously aligned.
• You were fire resistant.
• You were cold resistant.
• You were sleep resistant.
• You were shock resistant.
• You were poison resistant.
• You were magic-protected.
• You saw invisible.
• You were telepathic.
• You were invisible to others.
• You were stealthy.
• You aggravated monsters.
• You could teleport.
• You had teleport control.
• You regenerated.
• You were protected.
• You were very fast.
• You had reflection.
• You were extremely lucky.
• You had extra luck.
• Good luck did not time out for you.
• Amaterasu Omikami was angry with you.
• You are dead (2nd time!)

Creatures Vanquised
2245 creatures vanquished.

(including four priests, five shopkeepers, Medusa, a castle full of angry soldiers, two red dragons, one each of blue, orange and green dragons, Asmodeus, a pet dog called Sirius, Jubilex, Ashikaga Takauji and 103 various blobs…)
Genocided species:

• vampires
• vampire lords

2 species genocided.

Conduct:

• You genocided 2 types of monsters.
• You never polymorphed an object.
• You used 7 wishes.

I am getting better, see… About two weeks, that’s how long I’ve been playing that character. And it all comes to nothing.

Ah well…

August Update: S2006

Aye, that’s basically the same entry title I used to report on Statto’s party last August. Come on; you can’t expect me to change a winning formula – read the archive; last August’s posts rocked…

Anyway, general brilliance aside, one of the best features of last August’s updates was the genius Radio Prune-like soap opera update I created after, for a solitary tense week I was mostly away from the ‘Net and annoying the people filming the Da Vinci Code in Lincoln…

…So I’m not doing that, this time. I can’t be bothered. Anyway, this is an entry to tell you about S2006, not Audrey’s brother’s wife’s gibbon.

So, anyway. On to the real reason you’re all here: You got bored of the rest of the Internet and came to rubberneck the Second Annual ElectricQuaker Party Review:

Three things of S2006 stand out in particular:

1. The playlist was astonishingly dubious. I continue to maintain that Robbie Wiliams, R&B and Radiohead do not a party album make…
2. It absolutely pissed it down. To the point where even I was starting to get damp, beneath the layers of dubbin-ed hat and Drizabone
3. It was the first party where I tried to go to sleep, and in consequence, everyone else let the fire go out.

Right, that’s the grumbly bit out of the way!

S2006 is the wettest S on record – S2005 was a bit damp, I’ll grant you that, but it really did chuck it down last night – in the end, even I was starting to get damp, and that was under a well dubbin-ed hat and an oilskin cloak (Blessed +1 Drizabone). Consequently, I took a tent, and actually went off at 5am for a bit of a nap. I’d got a sleeping bag, as well, but that would’ve meant taking my boots off, so I ended up lying in a tent with the rain pounding down, and astonishingly high pitched animal noises coming from Sally away in the tent to my left.

However, I get ahead of myself. The party itself started shortly after I arrived (following an interlude in which we filled up on grub and Kerreth & I had a rant about the abysmal failings of the last episode of Dr. Who…) and people gradually turned up after that.

Once again, we broke out the Paddling Pool For Cooling Beer (except my ale, obviously, because that would be a) yuk and b) stupid since it was cold and wet) [CoolPool concept (c) Wiggin, S2003] and gave thanks to Coff and Ostler for bringing a small batch of ice to hurl in there to assist with the chilling.

To counteract the chilling of all non-beers, we managed to get a fire going with the clever use of lots of firelighters, some very dry kindling and Armstrong’s boat, which was a bit sad for him, I think, but which burnt fantastically well, albeit in a varnishy sort of way.

Once that was away and going we were able to settle down for the main business of the evening which was either a) having a good time, or b) wandering about and taking photos of people enjoying themselves, whilst likewise having a good time. Having half-inched my mother’s compact digicam, I went for option b, and I’m hoping Statto’s going to get some of the photos and little films organised and online presently, because things like Paw and Kerreth dancing drunkenly and attempting to sing along to Boney M’s Rasputin are fantastic…

Paw & Kerreth …Nah nah nah nah na- -reatest love machine! There was a Cat that- nah nah nah nah…

…doesn’t even begin to cover it. There was Cossack dancing, too.

Mansbridge & Abi turned up, late, but not as late as Wiggin or Ed, and I spent a good while chatting to him & various other people under the shelter of the awning whilst the rain came and went around us. Also, there were rhubarb & custard lollipops, which I’d been really enjoying until Rosalind suddenly said “Coo! I can see your huge fat stomach through your camera!” [I think, in fact, she may not have said ‘huge fat,’ but even so, it was a briliantly tactless means of saying “Hey, that digital camera’s got a small display screen on the back that shows you what’s visible through the lens!” so I found myself broadly amused…

Just like last year, a whole pile of people kept saying I look like Terry Pratchett, which was random, and Luke Ostler won several million bonus points because, as I ran at him in the dark, Drizabone flapping and shiny black hat beating back the rain, he yelled “Help! It’s V for Vendetta!”

Well done that man who’s apparently only seen trailers for the film. [Can you believe, I read the whole of that book by way of an edition with “NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!” written on the front cover, and I still went “Good God, have they tried to make it into a film?” when I saw some poster about it in Edinburgh? See me follow what’s going on in the world..

O, aye, and on a side note, in the event that I get a job I may yet be up for further graphic novels, by way of passing the time, so any suggestions much welcome, darker the better, leave a comment at the foot of the post…]

Having just got myself establised Worlds Coolest Masked Mentalist [you have no idea how sore my cheeks are from trying to keep up a frozen-mask smile…] Sally said we should all go for a walk, which somehow ended up with lots of people apparently lost on the airfield. How you can manage to get lost on a dark flat field from which you can always see the lone purple light in the control tower, I have no idea, but it took some time for everyone to get back together, and that with the help of a variety of flashing torches, and people disapearing in seach of people who probably intended to lose the other guys in the first place. Daftness, but what else is 3am for? [Don’t answer that one, cheers…]

Shortly after that, it came on to rain again, as it had been for pretty much regular 30-minute invervals ever since the end of the playlist at midnight. Presently, people began to head off to their own tents (or other people’s tents, as the case apparently was a little over 60% of the time) except for Tamsyn, who got exiled from her tent after a camera-shy bloke called Ben knocked the awning over, and then contrived to undo all the guy lines…

O, aye, and except for the people who had it away to the snug comfort of a spacious 406 they’d brought with em, so as not to mix their high-society colonialness with the common people. Bloody Mansbridge and his sloping off to the warm…

I hung on for a bit, although I may be getting the chronology wrong at this point, and watched a couple of old episodes of [post BBC are reactionary dicks and fire Angus Deaton] HIGNFY on a small DVD player with Josh & Paw, and then I started to feel the damp through my coat with increasing shiverfulness, so about 5am, in the absence of a nice reviving cup of coffee and a DVD of South Park BLU to tide me over till everyone else got up at half eight, I wandered back to my tent, where, as I’ve already said, Sally’s screeches and Joe Armstrong’s HGV-shifting-into-first-gear snoring created an interesting stero effect.

With my usual organisation skills and forward planning, I’d brought with me both a roll-mat and a sleeping bag. With my usual “Christ, it’s 5am, I’m tired, I need coffee and I’m sure as Hell not faffing about with a sleeping bag that I’ll have to stuff back into its bag in the morning” attitude, I pulled off my coat and hat, shoved on the uberjumper that kept me sweating in the -10 frosts of the Real Ale Ramble and went to sleep.

I can’t pretend to have slept especially well – few people would, I think, on a hard floor, in a cold and damp tent, with the rain pounding on the canvas as if God himself wanted Sally to stop screaming so he could get in a bit of kip before the daily staff meeting, but I managed three hours of fitful dozing, and then I hauled myself back out, to see the fire was nearly out (Thanks Harper, for trying to speed that one up… Daft bugger…) and Mrs Statto was up & about distributing cups of tea.

I’ve said many times before I’m not a morning person, but by God I’m good at mornings if I’ve just pulled an all-nighter and there’s a handy cup of tea. Thanks to that I was perked right up and made it back to Newport in the back of Mavis, the Barlow Nurseries plant factory truck with a contingent of troops off to get the 1100h 481 to Telford.

And that, all in all, was a hugely wet S. Roll on 2007, and hopes of a marginally less sodden mid-August.

Do continue to check out the Party Website, where I’m told Statto is planning to put up the pictures and webcam feeds and so on and such like.

Have fun!

@ – a human or other object (old man) seen: wally.

I think I’ve been playing too much NetHack… Was on a bus through Oxford this afternoon & saw, further down the road, an old grey-haired bloke in a white jacket.
I absolutely swear my first thought was “Hey! A Giant Mimic!”
O dear…

Protected: Generic Exploratory Test

Huzzah!

Many thanks to Statto for retriving EQ from the patent Gay-Abyss that is “broken things on the internet”. *sigh*.

Now I’ve got it back I’m planning on considerably tinkerage, and, perhaps, will get in a few actual links to otherwebsites, this time, such as I’ve not had since BigMcLargeHuge went tits-up at the end of July 2005. I’m also hoping to fish some of the livejournal entries I made around that time last year out of their coffins and shove ’em in here with appropriate timestamps &c.

I’ll let you know if I manage that, not that you’re liable top be bursting to find out what I was up to back then, since, if you care, you already know, but hey… It’s all good practice.

O, yeah – if you want me to link to a site (and I know you, and you’re not offering me drugs I don’t want, or pornography I’ve no immediate use for, and could get much cheaper on a newsgroup anyway…) then leave me a comment, and I’ll try and work out how to set things up.

What’s an XFN?

I’ve been to the Fringe. And it’s British. Hoorah!

Ah…

Now in Wallingford (where, tiresomely, I’ve just realised that the laptop is running Win 2k, which means it won’t recognise the iriver. Joy of refusing to wait and get a 120 instead of an H10.)…

However, the “now in Wallingford” bit is impressiveish, on account of my having previously been holed up in Edinburgh for a week, in a wonderfully plush flat with Ruth [Well, duh…] and also Dan and Claire, which was muchly cool.

Marked contrast of the aforementioned plush flat to my previous accommodation in Edinburgh, (a sort of bleakish Scottish Penbryn), which was super, and it was bang opposite the Cannon’s Gait, where we, er, spent the week. No, really, we did. Joy of the Free Fringe and Peter Buckley Hill.

[Everyone cheer…

…Hooray! &c.]

This was all muchly entertaining; and I’ve now spent an entire week watching various stand-up things. Among my favourites were Radio Pear, the aforementioned PBH, Yianni’s Head and My Family and Other Alcoholics, plus, of course, the Pick of the Fringe shows on at the Cannon’s Gait. Had a fantastic time, probably going to work my way round to bashing up some “proper” reviews of some of the stuff, presently.

Do keep an eye on Dan’s blog, since you’ll notice he’s promised some toptastic stories of our experiences and you will want to see them. And do visit that link to check out the piccy of us with the inventor of the Free Fringe. Muchos free comedy. Best in the world. Hoorah!

*sigh*

In many ways, a pity to be back; the train journey down was especially depressing – a change at Crewe, which is beautiful – it’s actually light, and you can see the sun, and everything (Can you tell I normally change trains at Birmingham New Street?) – and then I got off the train at, uh, Stafford.

Rubbish. But I did manage the full 250-odd miles in five hours, which impressed me, especially as I had two changes.

And now, as I say, I’m back in Wallingford, for a couple of job interviews. And I’m using the old keyboard from the MITAC 286 I had back in 1989. Hooray for individually sprung keys and a proper productive-sounding clackety typing noise!

Ah… I do like Edinburgh. Many many thanks to Dan & Claire (&, obviously Ruth as well) for a fantastic time, and I’ll strongly advise anyone reading this who’s expecting to go to Edinburgh whilst the Fringe is on to check out the comedy at the delightful (& smoke-free, huzzah!) Cannon’s Gait pub on the Royal Mile.

Have fun!

Force Prompt: It’s like Sith Lightning, only nastier.

Note: I continue in my *not* actually endorsing any of this in anyway; it’s more than a little vicious. But it is interesting to study.

A while back, now, Dan made a a post about what we called the ‘Dark Side’ of Active Listening, which we’d recently talked about. In it, he describes a couple of what are, basically, Dark Side force powers; taking the skills of Active Listening and twisting them to your own ends.

I was on a train, today, and I came up with another one. I haven’t actually tried it on anyone, of course. [Although, just occasionally, I worry that I may’ve invented the entire Dark Side out of absent-minded stubborness…]

During the course of what we shall call a ‘normal’ conversation, you may’ve noticed that people cut across one another, in a bid to say whatever it is they want to say. During a ‘listening’ conversation, on the other hand, the Force User, doing the bulk of the listening, is likely to give out signals to the person doing the (bulk of) the talking.

You’ll probably have heard ’em, at some point or other – things like “Mm-hm,” and “go on,” and so-forth. These utterances don’t interrupt the flow of the talking, and don’t take too much brain-power to process, so whoever’s talking doesn’t have to take their mind of their own thought process to see if they need to work out a response; they’re just little prompts from the listening Force User to show that they’re still paying attention, and aren’t sat their composing a shopping list and looking blank.

Enter the new Dark Side power: Force Prompt.

By way of illustration, I shall carry on from where Dan’s original example, in which a boss demanded to speak to a tardy employee, left off: we join the scene in the boss’s plush corner office, where the boss is winding up his talk to the tardy guy – an avid Darksider, as we have already seen.

Boss: …I mean, looking at the records, you’ve been late in in the mornings on more than 20 of the previous 31 working days which frankly isn’t good enough.
Darksider:Mm-hm
Boss: Not only that, but you’ve also been leaving early for lunch on a regular basis, and you’re often not back at your desk until gone 2:15. Now I know that you’re not having any problems at home, because we have discussed this before, and you’ve always said everything was fine,* so I really can’t see any explanation for this other than sheer laziness.
Darksider: Mmm.
Boss: Frankly, I’m afraid it’s all getting rather serious; I can afford to give you one last chance to sort this out, but I’m afraid it really will be one final chance.
Darksider: OK…
[pause]
Darksider: … Go on…

That’s the Darksider using Force Prompt, right there; the Boss has wrapped up what he wants to say, and, because the Darksider hasn’t been interrupting, but has just been listening attentively, he’s said everything he wants or needs to say – the Darksider’s given him all the space he needs to say what he wants, and so the Boss has, logically enough, said it.

Then the Darksider prompts him to continue.

In essence, having listened so well to what the Boss has to say, the Darksider now refuses to stop listening.

The Boss, then, has nothing left to say, and is left with two realistic options:

1) He can repeat bits of what he’s already said, which is likely to make him sound rambling and vacant, as he searches for a new way to phrase what he’s said only seconds before.

(Even if the Boss takes this option, the Darksider can carry on listening all day; at some point the Boss is going to be driven into the second option:)

2) The Boss can send a clear, definite signal that there’s nothing left to listen to: “OK, well, I’ve said my piece,” for example, or “Well, er, that’s all I’ve got to say, really,” – a sentences which shift the balance of authority and automatically make it sound like the Boss is apologising for taking up the Darksider’s time by talking to him.

Finally, of course, the Boss can skip options 1) and 2) and try for the really brave option 3):

3) Say Nothing and Wait

… And Wait…

…And Wait…

He’s onto a losing battle with this one, although it’s a gutsy move to try: the Darksider can just sit there in silence, with an open posture, and with his head slightly to one side, still listening to the Boss. That’s pretty cruel of the Darksider, since many people don’t get on well with silence, and especially not in situations like this one, where the Boss is going to end up running back over what he just said and thinking of ways it would’ve sounded better.

Eventually, the Boss is going to be forced into taking something like option 2, just to stop the silence and deliberately cue the Darksider into talking. That’s fine; the damage should be done, by then…

…Even if it really, really is the Darksider’s last chance, the whole encounter is likely to leave his Boss feeling strangely uneasy – because the Darksider forced a shift in the balance of power – and, with a bit of luck, won’t be in a hurry to call the Darksider back, even to sack him, because he associates talking to the Darksider with feeling awkward and not knowing what to say.

Like I say, I’ve not tried it on anyone. I’m not really a big fan of Darksiding as an actual course of action, and I don’t suggest you do it. On the other hand, it’s fascinating stuff, and I’m pretty sure this is a Darkside tactic that’s going to battle it out with Force Mishearing for my favourite Darkside power.

And I really do think it’s fascinating how something really useful like Active Listening can be warped into something genuinely cruel and heartless. Scary. But fascinating.

This Jolly Thought For the Summer Holidays was brought to you by Mister JTA’s Random Evilness, 2006. Terms & conditions apply.

* [Note that I never said the Boss was especially sensible]

*sigh*

Been sat applying for jobs all day. Laptop; no real keyboard. Absence of mouse (yeah I know keyboard shortcuts, but I don’t use ’em enough to be as fast as mousing, I keep having to stop and think “Is it ctrl+tab to skip on a tab, or is it shift+tab?” [For the record, it’s ctrl+shift to skip forwards a tab, ctrl+shift+tab to skip backwards one. In Firefox, anyway].

My shoulders hurt. And I’m stupidly really, really tired, despite having been drinking plastic coffee all day. (I’d’ve had real stuff, but it would take ages).

Still, I’ve now applied for a whocking great, uh… three jobs. It’d be faster if they were just easy “e-mail in a CV” jobs, but they keep wanting me to fill out forms-that-you-can’t-quite-cut-n-paste-information-to; so I keep having to re-word the same skills to fit different jobs. This is time-consuming, and now my shoulders really hurt.

O, bugger, I said that already.

Hey ho. Back to it, I guess.

O, yeah, also good luck to Suz with the jobhunting, and if it helps, every job in Oxford I looked at last month demanded fluent Italian, or German, or Spanish. Likewise every job in Reading.

Later ladies & gents…

O now this is nice.

Seriously. I’m a big fan of memes because they can be really fascinating; the shoddy ones where they ask things like “I am very kind” and the results are dead easy to fiddle are beautiful because it’s always a fair bet that the results people post are the results they want to be seen to have…

That’s always fascinating. This one, on the other hand, far, far cleverer than I’d initially anticipated (although I went in with a healthy bundle of skepticism at the concept of a test that learns to be more accurate as it goes along, I can honestly say I didn’t have any of that skepticism by the time I finished…)

So yeah. I’ve got an interesting result… I’m not entirely sure I agree with it, but, hey, here it is nevertheless.

take the ‘Smart’ Personality Test

Now shove off and have a pop at it yourself. Fascinating.

A Message from the Emperor.

And now, from Coruscant, an update on the current security crisis from the Imperial head of state, Emperor Palpatine.
Emperor…

*pause*

“Citizens of the Empire.

“Following the wanton destruction wrought on our stormtroopers by pro-Jedi terrorists aboard the Tantive IV, and the subsequent abduction of two of our Droids – R2D2 and C3PO – by an unnamed escape pod, the Galactic Empire has been obliged to send troops into the desert currently occupied by the sand people in a bid to discover and destroy their potentially leathal droid caches. The deaths of civilians such as the moisture farmer Owen Lars is an unfortunate consequence of our imperative to preserve our way of life and safeguard the well-being of our Imperial citizens.

“On the plus side, the man’s dead, so any of the droids, resources or intergalactic shoulder-fired rockets he had that might’ve been used to help the Jedi terrorists have probably been destroyed along with him and the rest of his neighbourhood, and it’ll help to send a warning to the other scum down there.

“Meanwhile, whilst we are saddened by the necessity of the genocide on Alderaan, we would like to point out that this was necessary in order to demonstrate to the Rebel Alliance that just having a few comical droids and X-Wings isn’t going to be enough for them to damage us; we could destroy all the rebels just like that, if we wanted to. That would, of course, entail some further loss of civilian life, but lives lost in the interests of the security of the Imerial Empire are, at least, lives lost well…

“Finally, I would like to counter arguments made from some unscrupulous quaters claiming that the only reason the Galactic Empire is allowed to get away with this sort of this is because we are run by the Sith.

“Sure, the Sith have had a bad press, over the last 5,000 years or so, and on many occasions we have been repressed, brutalised and murdered by the Jedi Order and their lapdog Republic. However, following the comparatively recent invention of the Galactic Empire we have found a new home, right across the entire galaxy, just like the Sith teachings of old promised we would have. Alongside this home, we have also gained new security.

“We refuse to allow this security to be threatened by anyone, even politically unnaware moisture farmers living in the desert and doing no harm to anyone: if we say they’re a threat, we can damn well blow up their world and do as we please. Anyone who argues that the attack on Alderaan was ‘extreme’ or ‘disproportionate’ is guilty of socially unnaceptable anti-Sith bias, and should be silenced as soon as possible, before their remarks get to these terrorists and their lethal droid caches and encourage the resistance.

“In conclusion: Yes, the Empire has killed a few people recently. Yes, all of these people have been civilians, but many of them may have been thinking about joining terror groups such as the Rebel Alliance and the Jedi. Even if they weren’t, it’s possible they may have been the sort of people who could’ve become terrorists, if we hadn’t killed them. The Imperial response to the loss of two of our droids and a spare escape capsule from the Tantive-IV has not been disproportionate, and it is essential that we safeguard our security. If that means destroying entire planets, then that means destroying entire planets.

“Anyway, we soon hope to kill the leader of the terrorist scum, one Obi-Wan Kenobi. Once we’ve done that, it’ll be the end of the Rebel Alliance and their scum Jedi friends for good. And that’ll make the deaths of all the civilians worthwhile.”

Update times are here again.

Can’t think of anything to say, mind. Newport is much the same as ever, only intolerably hot. Current estimate for today’s hottest temperature seems to be 33 degrees centigrade. This is frankly ridiculous. Aber, of course, gets off with a whole degree less of unbearability, probably because of having the sea.

Paul – I may yet take you up on your offer and slope off to live in the Land Of No Lifts. Anyway, I ought to drop in and see how the girl from, er, Room B (?) is doing. She’s probably wondering why she hasn’t seen me you the guy who said “Hi I’m Paul, pleased to meet you” for over a month by now…

In other news, I’ve been trying to copy crackly old VHS films we’ve got (mainly having taped them off the telly) to a format that exists, like DVD. It’s mostly going OK, although trying to actually watch the VHSes makes my eyes water, but there’s a couple of ’em – not shop-boughts ones, mind, ordinary tape-it-yourself bits – where I try to set the DVD player to soak up the film, and the lazy sod says “Cannot copy this, it’s prohibited.”

Bloody cheek. Anyone know how to stop it doing that? Because either I get me legitimate backups of VHS tapes I already own onto DVD so I can actually watch them more than a year from now, or I haul off to a newsgroup and download pirated copies of the much higher quality DVDs of said films. I’m trying to be fair, I’m trying to make backups of things I’ve recorded off the telly at a lousy quality, but if they’re going to make that difficult then nuts to the lot of ’em; I’ll go get proper DVD-quality pirated stuff.

Due to head down to Oxford for the weekend, hooray! Not that any bugger is giving me a job, yet, mind. Swines. Still, it’ll be good (though it looks to be even worse down there than up here – I can’t stand the heat at all; I’d much rather it was nice and crisp and autumnal, with just a hint of frost. Then we could all pile on extra layers of clothes, bundle up with some soup, and feel nice and warm. Hot is all very well for deserts, and the like, but there’s a limit to how much you can take off to keep cool. And it’s never enough, either.

So, yeah. Stand by for the possibility of me upping sticks and taking sanctuary in Aber at some point in the next week. I fancy seeing a Buffy Night, for a start…

Hey ho. Going to go and take a cooling shower, see if that helps shift the unpleasant heat-induced headache I’ve got…

Have fun!

Fantastic!

For those of you who haven’t seen this yet…

…Isn’t that nice?

[For the record, can I just say I’ve no problem with the damn thing being named after a politician, and a Welsh politician would make sense, sure, even though it’s only ever going to be called the InterPol building, just like people only ever call Llandinam the Geography Tower…

…But if you were going to pick a Welsh politician, what’s wrong with one people have heard of? Like David “Old Age Pensions” Lloyd George, or Nye “NHS” Bevan?

O, yeah. They weren’t nationalists. Bloody UMCA.]

Hey ho. Currently wearing my rather shiny OSA tie; the pattern’s based on the balustrade on the walkway in the Old College, which is nice. I always did like that pattern…

Frankly quite a feeble meme…

…Since none of it’s very clear. As far as I can work out, blue crosses mean something doesn’t apply to me; red question marks means it does.

Red question marks? What in God’s name is wrong with a nice old-fashioned tick? Honestly. Way to start with one set of imagery and suddenly turn it arse about face, table-loving meme dude…

…O, aye, and Paul, yer meme’s coming. I just haven’t got round to it yet!
(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

* * * * *

Cool! I just extended my name by a whole two letters!

So… Yeah. Graduated yesterday. That was a new one.

Since I was not only turning up to graduate but also leaving on the same day, Aber was predictably fantastic (O, aye, it rains there sometimes, but it doesn’t dare if it knows you’re leaving anytime soon…).

It dun’t half feel weird, though, mainly, I think, because I’m now in a situation where I’ve left on paper, but don’t really agree with what the paper says. But, then, I wasn’t really at Aber for the getting of a degree anyway; I was too busy having learning experiences, and the like. Getting a degree, therefore, isn’t something I’m finding to be the cut-off other people seem to take it as.

That said, I ought to be grateful to have made it as far as graduating at all – back in 2003, AGS sent eight people up to Aber, three of ’em to do English. Somewhere along the way, Messers. Ben ‘Convince JTA to skip every A-level Biology Lesson bar Two’ Michael and Thos. ‘Aberystwyth has Lecture Theatres? What on Earth For?’ McCaughey seem to have caught stray bullets. I didn’t actually notice at the time, on account of being too busy ducking myself, but three of us went into that Department, and I appear to be the only one who’s made it out. Hm.

You’ll forgive me for the faintly militaristic imagery there, at least if you know me… Pacifist, yes, adverse to looking at situations as if they were dramatic all-against-the-odds action films, no.

I didn’t have any money to buy my gown and hood &c. This is a bit of a bugger, because I was rather enjoying swanning about in them – for some reason, I kept thinking of our ex-deputy head Mr. Iddon, which is a bit weird, because AGS had at least ten teachers who used to swan about in proper academic clothing – and I imagine I’ll end up buying a set once I’ve managed to finalise the Get A Job plan (still working on it…)

Uh. Went and got some big proper photos taken, which I’ve no done for a while, and Boy, has digital photography improved those things… Also took a bunch of shots on the little domestic camera, which my mother made the mistake of taking out in the vicinity of Dan, with predictable results. Hey ho.

Was quite astonished by the number of people I ran into; people I’ve not seen for years suddenly started popping up all over the place. Also there was much champagne. Have got myself an e-mail address-for-life thingy, which you can get from me if you want it by either: e-mailing an address you already know I have [choice of Gmail or current UWA account] sending me a text [as long as your version of my phone number is from November 2003 or later] or by leaving a comment with you details [I ain’t getting spammed, cheers.]

Ah… Listening to Pandora again… I guess it must be near on a year since that came out, actually; vague recollections of it as an element of the immortal summer of 2005…

…Anyway, that’s doubtless rather more than you had any desire to know about me and graduating, but the photo Dan’s put up doesn’t quite say it all, so I thought I’d put in a few words as well, not least because the “picture = 1,000 words” argument has never held much in the way of water for me. Who ever raised an army using a hasty rally and a bloody painting to get people’s blood up?

Enjoy…

Rebound of the Most effort-involving Meme ever…

Andy

1. Random Thing:Despite the fact that, aside from Ruth, you were the only person in PJM 80 I was already remotely aware of at the start of the second year, I actually saw twice as much of the other guys in there as I did of you. What, did you have a ropeladder out of your window to sneak off and fight crime?
2. Your Challenge… Come to a Geek Night, play us all at Risk, and try not to go out before at least four other people. I think the best you’ve managed so far is second out, but then Dan does keep fudding you over… Still, give it a shot!
3. Your colour is purple. So now you know.
4. Something I like about you is how calmly you sit there and take us all taking the mick out of your degree. To manage to put up with that for a constant two years is pretty impressive. Well done!
5. My first memory of you is the first time you came to a Troma Night. Inexplicably, you rang the bell (which worked back then) and, since I was nearest the door, I got sent down to see who it was. Lo, if I didn’t open the door to this really nervous guy I’d never seen before, and who hadn’t a clue who I was, standing on one leg and saying “Er. Sorry. Er. Is this where Troma Night happens…?”
   It was very sweet.
6. You remind me of the animal that we humans call a dolphin. I honestly don’t know why; I just thought of you in your zombie cheerleader costume and thought “that’s a dolphin, that is.” Weird…
7. I’ve always wanted to ask you how you manged to stay so calm when I accidentally smashed your nose a couple of years back. That was impressive, that was…

Dan

1. Randomness: You’re the only person I know who has two keyboards in his tower because ‘this one isn’t compatible with the BIOS.’ You’re likewise the only person I know to have actually played a game so much you broke the mouse.
2. Your challenge is to finish all the projects you’re working on! Including the Troma Night Adventure games. Happily I’ve brought a folding chair and a flask of tea, so I can wait a while yet…
3. You remind me of yellow. It’s probably the T-shirts.
4. What I like about you is the way you seem to be actually incapable of disliking people. I’ve never yet seen you take against someone without qualifying it and explaining how you could be completely in the wrong. It’s a fantastic quality, but it’s also really weird. And you never play a game without helping your opponents, either. You actually do care about everyone, all the time, and it’s frankly amazing. Don’t stop.
5. My first memory of you …is actually a memory of Duality. Or, at least, a really beefy looking tower and someone vaguely sat next to it on a funny stool. My clearest memory of you, on the other hand, is of the time the two of us, and Ruth & Claire, settled down to watch Revenge of the Sith, which you’d got hold of. Just before the big opening titles you said “O, God! I forgot to check what language it’s in! Nah, it’ll be OK. It’s bound to be in English.”
   …and then the yellow words rolled up the screen. In Cyrillic.
6. The animal you remind me of is a coconut. OK, that’s not really an animal. But all I can think of right now is a coconut.
7. I’ve always meant to ask you if you’re going to sort out a Diplomacy engine so we can set up a game. I’m still OK to GM it, but I cannae do the code!
   

Well, that’s everyone. Gee, see how many friends I have who want to see what I think of ’em… Tcha. Jessies.

Have fun!

Most effort-involving Meme ever…

…But, hey, it’s cool. And it gets people to network a bit, which is frankly rather more useful than being able to tell ’em you’ve swung the answers so you come out as Nob from the Prancing Pony in the ‘Which minor LoTR character are you’ quiz (As opposed to the first result you got, the uncool and surly Ted Sandyman)…

Frankly, the vast bulk of you blog reading types will’ve seen this on Abnib already, but I’m sure there’s a few people out there who I’ve met, and who read this, and then keep very quiet about it, stocking up information to weild later. Go on, you quiet types, drop me a comment, and I’ll add you to the To Do list…

Anyway, what happens is this:

What you do:

1. Leave a comment. (Might take a while for me to validate it, if you haven’t commeneted in a non-spammy way before)
2. Put this on your own blog, later. Or don’t.

What I do:

1. 1. I’ll respond with something random about you (with most of you lot out there, it shouldn’t be hard).
2. 2. I’ll challenge you to try something (it might even be something pleasant).
3. 3. I’ll pick a colour that I associate with you (I’d rather not, but it’s a legal requirement under the Internet Memes Convention of 1996).
4. 4. I’ll tell you something I like about you (aww).
5. 5. I’ll tell you my first or clearest memory of you.
6. 6. I’ll tell you what animal you remind me of (In accordance with the Third Internet Memes Convention [1998, S. 2, p. 145]).
7. 7. I’ll ask you something I’ve always wanted to ask you (if there is anything!).

(and apologies to Dan for lifting the entire list essentially verbatim off his blog)

Go on, then, give it a go. Justify my feeble ‘memes’ post category!

Have fun!

Well, I’m back…

…In Newport, that is; not in Aber, or anywhere else especially interesting. Although, that said, Newport is a phenomenal step up in its offers of interest when compared to Colburn, N. Yorks, a place that’s actually more boring than Borth. (At least in Borth there’s the Victoria, and you can look at the sea…)

But, yeah. Big ol’ Round Britain tour now over, and I’m really, really tired. For this I can mostly blame the weekend which, like Ruth, I spent rigging lights. Or, rather, Ruth, who has lots more experience of lighting, spent rigging lights, and which I spent cutting gels. No. 54s? Don’t talk to me about No. 54s… I’m also sick to the back teeth of 124s, and the sooner they get shut of the rainforests that require so many green par cans to emulate, the bleedin’ better…

…Nah. Actually it was much fun, although very hard work, and although it was blisteringly hot it’s the first day in quite a long while that I’ve done that work-really-hard-and-enjoy-it type of work that leaves you feeling strangely good about the world.

And at any rate, it’s better than mowing the lawns.

I am, however, faintly cheesed off to have walked past the place where I had a job interview, only to find a hastily-written minature white-board propped up in the window, and explaining that the office inside can help you if you’re trying to buy or sell a home, and would you please come in and shove some money their way, please?

It’s an estate agents.

I do not believe, youngish and formerly naive though I may be, that the mark of a successful estate agency is a whiteboard amongst the adverts for houses in the window explaining to people looking for houses that, uh, you buy and sell houses. Such as the ones they’re looking at.

It doesn’t necessarily mean the whole enterprise is in trouble, of course, and I don’t know the whole story, but I’m still a bit fed up, since I can’t help but feel it’s a bit ominous…

Hey ho.

Anyway, I’m back in Newport now, having made it though the barren and featureless wilderness that is Working Trains From Didcot To Oxford, and we’ve got a fairly brainless we-used-to-rent-this-house-to-students-leftover electricity meter here, so I’d better leg it before the damn thing starts sulking at me.

Have fun!

Hooray!

Billie Piper to leave Doctor Who!

Now, OK, I don’t intend to have a pop at Piper herself, per se; as far as playing woefully misguided feeble-brained characters goes, she’s made a fairly good fist of it, but I ask you…

Since when did saying things like

“O, a paralel universe in which people who aren’t even slightly my parents exist! Time to go bugger about and say ‘hello!'”

and

“O, we’re in 1987, the year my father died – better go fuck with causality!”

ever entitle you to hang about time-travelling? Surely everyone knows basic Rule No. 1: “Don’t kill your own grandfather”.

It’s reasonable, therefore, to expect that everyone remotely involved with actual time travel likewise knows it’s important not to save your own grandfather since, as Fry so helpfully explained, it buggers about with causality.

Add to that her recent habit of saying things like “O, the TARDIS has been put out of action for the second non-related episode in a row, what a tragedy, hey, Doctor, let’s go fuck” and you begin to wonder why the Doctor doesn’t just buzz back to 1963 and dump the stupid girl back in the scrapyard where he first got himself lumbered with the equally frustrating Barbara Wright…

I don’t object, as such, to Billie Piper playing the part of Rose, but if they will go making Rose such a tooth-grindingly whingey hormonal wazzock I don’t see how they expect people to get fed up when they say she’s leaving then series.

O – and as for last week’s “All lifeforms have a deep-rooted imagery of the Devil, it’s a really basic part of conciousness” rubbish from the Doctor as he descended into the, uh… the “Pit” [Aye, that big hole with the demon thing that kept posessing people…] Well Christ, if I was Nigel Kneale and watching that I’d’ve smashed the television…

In other news…
I’m still in Newport. Joy.

Football continues to be dull as anything, mainly because all the matches look basically the same, but with faintly different jumpers.

‘s about it, really, except that UWA haven’t given me my Hafan desposit back yet, and the Midland are starting to sulk at me.

Whoof…

Heading back to Aber on the train & running Pink Floyd on the iriver… I’d forgotten how amazing The Trial was…
That said, I am on a huge red-bull-and-coffee buzz…

So here I am again…

…having left the seaside delights of Aberystwyth for the rural tranquility of Shropshire (Or, at least, where the rural tranquility of Shropshire would be but for the orange glow of Telford on the smog-laden horison).

Hoy. You would not believe the number of funny looks you get for taking a TV on a bus. I mean, honestly…

…Of course, I wouldn’t’ve had to take a TV on a bus (or on the train either) if the man who designed the Corsa hadn’t thought “Ooh, let’s make a back seat that is all in one bit and doesn’t fold down to allow three people in the car with part access to the boot,” but we can’t expect everyone to have a fervent desire not to be shoved head-first into a rusting petrol tank, now, can we?

Repeated thanks to Dan & Claire for helping with the scouring of Hafan – ignoring the several days packing prior to Saturday, and the packing of the Rev’s excuse for a half-sized car in the morning – it took as long to finish off packing, moving and cleaning out bits of the caravan as it took Ruth to get back to Colburn. In Yorkshire. 231 miles away.

Christ.

Thanks also to Paul for taking Ruth & I to Little Italy on Friday night. (Which I mention mainly to remind him that we’re going to pay for him to live in Stratford for a bit this December).

Once back in Newport I spent an afternoon moving stupidly heavy toolchests. Again. I now have little burst blood vessel / stretch-mark things on the sides of my shoulders. I’m fed up with moving things.

Still, it’s all done now, except for getting back all the stuff that’s still at the Place, and which is probably going to make Operation Collaborative Cottaging marginally harder than it would otherwise have been. Sorry about that.

Uh. So, yeah. I’m back in Newport again. Just thought I’d update to let everyone know I haven’t ended up in Manchester or some such distant place by mistake.

Have fun!

Uh.

Just testing an Abnib bug. Or so I’m told.

Oi, Doctor!

That tape was NOT betamax! Dear oh dear…

Do I look like I can be bothered to lift a finger?

Saturday, ladies and gents, saw me take the final exam of my degree, on 20th Century literature. Happily, works of more than a couple of hundred pages are out of style at the moment (unless you’re Robert Jordan, writing for Americans, or JK Rowling, writing for seven-year-olds), so I had no real trouble reading the books on Saturday morning.

(O, and can I just take this opportunity to bitchslap Sam Selvon, author of ‘The Lonely Londoners’ for writing what would otherwise be a perfectly acceptable tale of the lives of West Indian immigrants to London in the 50s entirely in a crude approximation of Carribean dialect.

Firstly, I’m not made more sympathetic to the plight of people living in a vagueish culture of racism by their trotting about speaking like the Black and White Minstrels, and secondly it’s not especially West Indian. To prove this point, I read through the entire second half in a corny Dudley accent, and it didn’t really make me strain the words. That’s because saying “He get on bus” and “Every fella he look for a work jus soon as he in London” can be read as being West Indian, West Midlands or West Country. Don’t write dialect. It doesn’t actually sound like you think you write it.

Thirdly, it’s a pain in the arse to read, dammnit! Put some bloody commas in, and stop using sentences that go “I need a work Gallahad say Moses say yes you need a work and then I got up and then I brushed my teeth and then I went to school and I said morning miss hilton and she said morning class and then I went to assembly and…”

Cretin.)

[/rampage]

*sigh*

Feeble West Indian attempts to make all West Indians sound like Jar Jar Binks aside, that exam was the last of my degre. Woo. See me care.

Er. Or not.

I probably should care, of course; thirty years ago people coming to the end of their Finals would be overjoyed at finally gaining some species of truly hefty qualification.

As it is, I’ve been taking exams every summer since 1995 (KS2 SATS, 1st & 2nd year exams at AGS, KS3 SATS, mock GCSEs, real GCSEs, pointless AS-es and genuine A-levels calling themselves A2s, 1st year Aber exams, 2nd year Aber exams, and my final exam of the past eleven years, 20th Century Literature.

Quite frankly, I’m years past the stage where I cared about exams – at Primary School, SATs were really imporant, and were, I was told, going to “make the difference of what set I was in at secondary school,” a comment made almost entirely superflous by the fact I’d passed the 11-plus by then, and wasn’t going to be streamed until GCSEs.

Then, somehow, KS3 SATs became really important (which, if true, would’ve been a crying shame, since I got an inexplicable 7 for Science, and only a 5 for English. That, of course, was before I wrote science off as a bad lot; I used to be fairly interested in it).

GCSEs rolled up shortly after, in a blaze of mock exams in Year 10, and year 11, and then the real things, and they were really *really* important because, we were told, because GCSEs were things on which basis people give you a work.

[see how annoying that it?]

…On which basis people give you a work, that is… unless you do AS levels.

Which, ditto, unless you do A2s, and go to university.

Frankly, I’ve spent an entire decade doing exams on a bare minimum of an annual basis, and since 2000 every bloody January and every bloody summer, and it’s long since past the point at which I could work up and interest, or, God forbid, apprehension, at the prospect.

Sure, when I did the 11-plus I was dead nervous, and again when KS3 SATs happened, and we all filled into the school Gym in dead silence, walked over the noise-dampening tarps as quietly as possible, and sat at tiny half-size desks trying not to breathe too loud in case they called it cheating…

But come on; I was that nervous in 1999. You can’t expect me to still be on edge when I walk into the great hall, looking for an equally half-size desk that’s not too near the door for me to feel a draft, and yet close enough that I don’t look a wally when I get bored and leave half an hour early to have a hot chocolate with Paul.

Taking exams is like taking hard drugs, as far as I can tell. To begin with, you’re dead nervous, you don’t know what it’s going to be like, you get a real buzz, and you pray you’re not going to make a real mess of it, and look stupid in front of all your mates…

…and then, eleven years later… It’s the same old thing, frankly, and you’re doing it half-heartedly; not in the manner of Heroin, because you need to, but in the manner of methadone, because you’re told to. And, frankly, it isn’t fun anymore, it isn’t clever, and it’s just the same old thing as it always is, with all the novelty and the rush and the excitement gone out of it…

Education is supposed to be about drawing people out, rounding out their personalities and making them interesting and intelligent people. It shouldn’t be about teaching them that exams are routine and dull, and that you pass them by chucking in a couple of quotes and saying “On the other hand” to satisfy the WJEC Assessment Objective 2 criteria you need to meet level 4 of the markscheme.

Where would be the rush in that?

Uh.

So, yeah, I probably ought to do some species of blog post before I nip off and grab some books to start revision with… Five exams knocked out of the running tomorrow, by the looks of it. Not mine, which is a shame, but at least it gets it out of the way.

Incidentally, who else has noticed the neat bit of spin UWA’s slapped onto the cancelled exams thing? According to the University

“Seventy percent of exams will happen as normal”

Or, to put it another way…

“A third of the exams will have to be cancelled”

OK, so it’s actually slightly less than a third – by a piddling three percent – but I bet you they rounded up to 70% because it sounded like a reasonably big number…

So, yeah…

I really, really ought to be fretting about this exam, I suspect. Am I?

Am I predictably Hell.

Meh. Currently nosing about in the hope I can get some species of job somewhere.

Enjoy.