»16th March 2008

Darkness Descends

Edit: I didn't finish this blog update but I thought I should stick it on here for you to read anyway.

So it's been a while since I last did a blog update. Usually this means that I feel compelled to write some Q&A style blog. Well this time I've decided to break with tradition and instead will try to make sense of the vague and incoherent notes I leave myself on my desktop in little .tod files (that stands for todo by the way, yeah, that's right, I can totally dig custom file types). So let's see what we have in the most recent one...


04:49 15/03/2008

I suppose this was the time I wrote the todo note. As you can see, I often get swells of good ideas early in the morning before I go to bed.

walking uphill in a hurry carrying several kilograms of books, food and laptop

As I remember, I was going to remark how this has been one of my main activities this semester. Walking uphill to uni, carrying loads of books to have around me whilst I think about working (or sometimes even to read whilst working!). Food: what I use to fuel my marathon library sessions. Laptop: what I use to do my work at the library on, or more often, what I use to waste time at the library playing Diablo II.

walking downhill with less food and more books listening to metallica live mp3s from the 80s, sometimes in a rush.

If I go uphill to uni, then I must also come downhill from uni to go home. Obviously, I have less food, having eaten it whilst taking one of my many, often consecutive, breaks from work. I have more books because I feel the need to hoard them and also the more books I have the smarter I become right? Sometimes I am in a rush coming back from uni because I leave myself little time to walk from uni down to Aire Street where I catch the last 209 at eleven. I haven't missed it so far this semester, which is good because it's quite a long walk from Leeds to Heckmondwike.
If you've ever had the misfortune of listening to my attempts at metal then you'll know that I'm a total Metallica cock rider, I think they're totally awesome. So of course I must frequently listen to the live recordings which I downloaded from www.livemetallica.com on my way back from uni. If I time it particularly well, I can synchronise my journey home with whatever music I'm listening to going back (usually Metallica). Doing this is good because I get maximum enjoyment and inspiration that way. A good example of what happens when I synchronise things like this is The Darkness Beneath.

waiting for buses

As you probably already know, my life unfortunately must be shaped around bus timetables, which is fucking lame. I hate buses, I want a car. Whilst it might be tolerable catching late buses--which tend not to be randomly late, don't get bogged down in traffic, and have just a few usually sombre passengers on--at any other times of day, buses are a fucking nightmare. They are always late, unless you are running late, in which case they are early. Bus drivers hold their passengers in contempt. Given even a fraction of a chance, they will do everything in their power to avoid picking up passengers and they particularly dislike students who make them bitter and resentful. Buses tend to attract, smelly, drunk, abusive, horrible people who enjoy being annoying dicks. Bus timetables are perplexing and inconvenient, a bus can only deliver you to your destination fifteen minutes late or forty five minutes early, you will have to walk at least half a mile to your destination, unless you want to compound your problems and catch a second bus. Bus rant over.

craig the affable drunk

One aspect of catching the late bus is that you start to recognise the people on the bus. On the last 209 I often see a young couple and their friend who must work the graveyard shift at Ikea. The half ten 229 usually has a leather-jacket-clad guy who looks vaguely turkish and gets off near the Porsche showroom. Anyway, I've bumped into this Craig guy a few times on the bus who both times has been pretty drunk. Bizarrely he actually started talking to me the second time he seen me. Craig apparently works in a call centre and goes into Leeds to meet his girlfriend. He seems to enjoy giving me pep talks about making the most of my life and making the right career choices. On no less than two occasions I've regailed him with my vague ideas about a career in journalism to which he's taken a great interest. At the back of my mind I can't help but think of him like some Elminster-type figure, randomly appearing to offer me sage advice about how I could best defeat Sarevok and the Iron Throne. Except instead of being a beardy old mage, he's an early thirties drunk, and instead of giving me advice about that important quest I should be doing, he gives me vague, slurred encouragement about my rather lacklustre career plans.

the amount of work this semester

Basically the reason I've not updated this thing very much, why I've been in a permanently bad mood with Guild Shit Wars, and why I've been spending so much time on bloody buses listening to Metallica is because of the increase in work this semester. There's two modules this semester, like last semester, except this time the monday tutorial is headed by Professor Gooch, whose tutorials are fucking hardcore and where I need to actually make serious preparation before-hand. On top of that there's the optional ten o' clock lecture on thursdays, which I've actually been going to to try and give me some peripheral knowledge about precisely what Gooch wants me to know, so I can bullshit more effectively, AS WELL AS the Invasion of Europe 1941-44 module headed by Professor Childs. So thursday is my busy day which involves me alternating between tutorials, reading for tutorials whilst incredibly tired, and sleeping in dark corners of the Edward Boyle Library.

guild wars is shit

FINISH ME!!!

computer games are sucking a lot

dwarf fortress

diablo ii

star trek:TNG

Dave

Some Other Stuff I Forgot To Note Down

Stencils


Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!