Five Hours of Fun - Saturday

I got up at about 0955. This was a problem as I had agreed with Arakasi that we'd do the WoA results at 1000. I managed to shower and get into the refectory by 1000. Arakasi doesn't read this so there's no way you'll know if I'm lying. I had a nice fry up there before doing the results. The results took five hours to do, or more. And the first thing that happens when they're done? Someone complains that I did something wrong, which I didn't. (It's okay to complain if you're right, but not if you're wrong). I talked to Edward Harry once I got back to my room. Edward is in Warrick *sniggers* and studying some dud course, physics or maths. Edward's been having fun and for some reason, when he shops at Tesco, gets FOUR bags of stuff. I'm not sure what he's getting, but there's certanly a lot of it. I cycled into Tesco and got my stuff. I popped into the GW and found that they don't have job vacancies, ah well. It was a match day so there were police everywhere along the way back. I think it was against Chelsea, with a Portsmouth victory. The reason I say this is because I passed some kids behind a big fence singing. 'Goodbye Chelsea, goodbye chelseea' (You can see it was imaginative) I almost got run over when a car broke the highway code (He wanted to turn right, I wanted to go straight ahead). The amusing thing is that there were 4 policemen on bikes about 5m away, I wonder if they took his numberplate :) I spent the rest of the evening re-writting some of the WoA readme stuff. It's now got more full stops in it. I also did various other little things to the site, it's getting a slightly new look and a massively new layout (from my end, not yours). Item of the Day - My lights get dimmer over the duration of a 3 mile cycle in the dark because it's cold, not because they are low on batteries (which is what I thought)

Yay, end of the week - Friday

I had no 0900 today, whoopie. That meant a lie in until 1000 ish. After getting up, having breakfast and browsing the net I did some maths revision, it paid off. When I got to uni and sat down after Tawfik's lecutre (real boring) I really learnt the questions well. In fact, by the time the exam came, I was worryingly confident. The exam is out of 20 marks (maths for those who have only just joined). This exam was on Trigonometary and nobody was looking forwards to it very much. Here are the marks I think I can forsee comming out of it, 40% is a pass (8 marks). Minimum Mark = 9 Probable Mark = 13ish Maximum Mark = 16 Mentally I think I got 16, but so far I've rarely been right there so I'm going to go with 13. The question I couldn't do is below. Solve 16cos^Øsin^Ø - 12cos^Ø - 12sin^Ø + 9 = 0 The ^ means that it is squared, and the Ø is the closest I could get to Theta. I cycled home, remmebered that I had the Student Training and found I had half an hour to get to the union. I downed a mug of tea, tunafish sandwhich and a couple of sweets and headed off. The whole thing looks like it'll be good, they're working on getting stuff for us such as book vouchers and free entry to the Union (club) in the evenings. I got back, found I'd missed dinner so had another sandwhich. I spent the rest of the evening doing some C and munching on sweeties. Interesting Item of Yesterday - For those that don't read the comments, yesterday a lady said that I looked very good in trousers. It looks like the nickname shorts won't be sticking for long...

18 Miles - Thursday

0900 lab for two hours, well, I got up late, but beat the bus there, I'm happy. After the lab I cycled back, did some PHP and ate lunch. The afternoon lecture was good fun. We tallied 7 stupid questions by Tom. Hassan knows that Tom is an idiot and made several remarks that we all thought were hilarious. Hassan also presented a problem, I solved it and he got me to explain how to the class. After the elevator pitch yesterday, it was easy. The problem was a simple formula and I of coruse explained it very well. Right after the lecture I went to tighten up my brakes, I'd almost crashed into a car the other day ^^. Deano came out and asked me if there was a problem with my bike. He then pulled out some Hex keys and really tightened up my brakes for me. I got some hex keys from Wilkinson for 2.50 at Deano's suggestion. Thanks Deano. My front brakes are now much better. I moped around the library for three quarters of an hour before meeting with the CU to help set up the sound for the night. I had to leave early to get dinner, but I came back and played doorman. After the service we walked to a pub, found it full and instead went to a candy shop. I bought some sweets (and so did everybody else). After that I walked Sophie, Sian and then Sam home. You'd think it weird me walking a guy home, but I figured that if he's on his own he's a target, and I've got a bike so I don't care. Of interest is that Sian and Sophie still don't believe I can go more than 20mph on my bike on a flat road.... I cycled back through SNOW, my eyes stung every time a snowflake hit them. Item of the Day - I didn't visit the WoA page once today

Toffee Squares - Wednessday

First order of the day, my 0900 lecture *groan*. The computing thingie was about files, while listening I got the terminal working on my Mac for C files similar to how they do it in Uni, that's GREAT news. Affter that we had the Technology Context and the 'Elevator Pitch'. An Elevator Pitch is where you have 60 seconds (roughly) to describe your product. Chi knew he'd have a hard time getting people to volunteer to do this (with only 3 minutes of prep time) in front of 200+ people. So he had three 256mb flash drives, I of course volunteered after a little thoguht (I already had one but I'm greedy). I did a presentation on Macs. Knowing that the prize was dependant on VOTES not SELLING POWER I made it ironic, I would 'Dis' Macs. This is roughly what I said. The Mac, it's great, it's got LOADS of features. It's got so many features, you've no idea what any of them do. What's a DASHboard doing on a computer, this isn't a CAR... Spotlight has Google Technology, well, WHO WANTS GOOGLE ON THEIR MAC? Gaming, well, sorry to say gents. It's non-existant on a Mac, no games whatsoever. Media. Macs are good at that, but how many people here do media? *Waits for show of hands* Anybody who just showed their hand is a moron, you shouldn't be doing computer science. Macs suck, but I still use one, thank you, you've been great. I didn't get as many votes as I thought :( I got back, did random stuff on the internet (I've gotten MSN working on the uni network) and then went to dinner. Their toffee squares are MASSIVE chunks of shortbread, a generous ammount of toffee and almost no chocolate. I talked to Dionne and apparently she didn't have time to add more chocolate. Still, that didn't stop me from having two... I got back, did some PHP and then went to CU hall group. Got back from that, did some more PHP until it was mostly working, blogged and went to bed. Interesting Item of the Day - I thought that 4 0900 lectures a week was bad, Lorna has 4 0530 starts this week!

Grimy Wheels - Tuesday

I got up in time for the 0900 lecture, went there, went to my maths one. Neither were particularly interesting, though in the maths one I had to pay attention as I didn't know everything there. I cycled back, sat down, had lunch, sat down again and cycled back in. I stopped off at Tesco to get some toothpaste and cornflakes. There was a two for one offer so my bag became a funny square shape as I just about fit the two boxes of 500g Cornflakes into it. The two hour lecture with Martin Cripps was interesting. He was talking about fibre optics and some stuff I have vague memories of from Physics AS level. After that lecture I cycled down to Portsmouth Cycle exchange and got them to have a look at my front brakes. Simply put, they used coarse language, were not very attentive to customers entering the shop and overall made me dislike them, I'll be looking at the other cycle shops soon. Upon getting back I took the front wheel off the bike and gave it a very good clean, I also cleaned the brake pads. I'll tell you how well it works tomorrow, suffice to say that today I was not slowing down very much at all. (scary when going 15mph in the first place). It's dawned on me today that every time I cycle into Uni, I cycle 6 miles. This means that this week (well, the 5 days of lectures) I will cycle approximatly (6 + 12 + 6 + 18 + 12) = 54 miles. The 18 is for thursday when I've got a mahoosive split between morning and afternoon lectures and then a CU event which is normally on monday. The Whale is here and it's not a sight for the faint of heart either. I've added about three more pictures to the cast page too. Item of the Day - Some muppet tried to use a brunch ticket to pay for his evening meal today, suffice to say he was laughed at by my table once I found this out. More importantly, they are apparently making toffee squares tomorrow :D

Aching - Monday

I overslept my 0900 lecture, which isn't a problem, apparently it was useless anyway. I turned up to the C lab and managed to do okay. After the lab I talked to Shikun Zhou and found that I didn't need to turn up to the lab that afternoon, wooohoo, free afternoon. I spent that afternoon talking to Aaron and watching various funny videos off the net. Dinner was below standard, I'm hoping Tom will make up for it tomorrow. I spent the Evening talking to a friend from Wales, a guy from Sweden (telling me why shorts are not as good in the eyes of the ladies as trousers). I also wrote out some stuff for WoA. With regards to the name of the post, My whole torso, that means stomach, back, chest and shoulders has been aching all day. I think I need to do push ups every day, sit ups too.... Intersting thingie of the Day - What I was most asked about by people on MSN today = Whale photos....

The Weekend Away

I fretted about missing the bus, and with just cause. I've yet to find out why, but on Friday the busses were rubbish, Lorna and I got a Taxi (she had a change of plans) and managed to get to the Hovercraft Terminal fine. The Hovercraft is really strange. It's not bumpy at all. When we got to the Isle of Wight we were given a minibus ride to the house. The guys were all downstairs and the girlies in the nicer upstairs rooms (well, warmer I think). We played some games, they were great fun and I got some pictures. Dinner was scrumptious. The evening meeting was rather long, but the speaker was intersting (you wait till you see the picture of him). He's called Dave Fenton and is from a church in Southampton. After the talk I chatted to random people and a load of us went to the beach. I was told a lot of times "You'll be cold in shorts". I had shorts, T-Shirt and Jacket (plus gloves incase it was cold). I threw rocks into the water for a while. I then, with everybody else, walked back to the house without a jacket on, I had almost worked up a sweat. 0725 in the morning was announced by Colin ringing a bell as hard as he could announcing morning prayer, most people didn't go. After breakfast we had another talk from Dave, he's a very good speaker. A mention must also go to the band. The band are from who-knows where but they were excellent and I told them so. The outdoor games were AWSOME. We first played bulldogs. By some fluke of chance, Andrew, the president of the CU was the winner of game two. Andrew was then the starting bulldog for game 3. He was pilled by about 7 people, all of whom were bigger than him. After Bulldogs we played some hide and seek, but that was called off because it was really boring. Then we played Capture the Flag. This would have been a great game, but most people started sliding around in the mud. After watching the various mud fights and not joining in there was another talk, dinner and a talk. The talks have proved to be intellectually stimulating and got me thinking a bit. Dinner that evening was again very nice, the talk equally interseting. I also went down to see a dead whale on the beach (pictures soon), it was HUGE. I wok up on Sunday rather tired, not however, as tired as some others. Some people had gone to bed at 0300 that morning, I didn't pity them at all. There were some group photos and I took many of them (I wasn't fussed about being in the pictures). We were all nackered so I can't remember an awful lot, the last time I felt like this physically was after the Britains Toughest Family weekend, I need to exercise more often. Once I got back I took my shorts off, I had worn them all weekend. Did my laundry, cycled to Tescos and got some basic supplies for myself and some milk for Lorna. The Langstone group minus Jack went to Easterney church. I went in Jeans, I of course regretted it shortly and wished I had cycled (I was somehow not worn out any more for a while). Now I'm tired and off to bed Interesting thing of the Weekened - Whales are HUGE

Safe and Sound

The weekend away was awsome, I've got pictures of everything from eating to a dead whale (I'm not joking, I saw a dead whale on the beach and took pictures). It was great fun and I'll edit this post later to say exactly what's happened. Thingie of the Day - Whales are HUGE