Guess What! - Saturday

That's right! Today was REALLY dull. Now, I know how annyoing it is to see a title like that so I've got a cunning plan. I'll say what I wish had happened today. In my mind this would have been a great day if... I woke up this morning at 0730 as planned (that's acutally what I did). It was very cold (hang on, this is rather real so far), getting washed was only plesent when hot water was involved. Still I was very much awake very fast. I grabbed a mug of tea, a sandwich and began working on WoA. Due to the multiple Database Systems I'd created it ran all the caclulations for me, I spent a whole hour and it'd done everything I needed it to for 40 different teams (we currently have 24 teams, 12 teams to a Custodian). Well, it was now very early in the morning, perfect time for a little Bible study. An hour later I understood more about what I'd been reading today and I'm really glad I spent the time to look at it and think about it. After that I decided to have a short nap. I was awoken from my nap by my phone, on the other end of the phone was this really nice Lady I've not told you about. She invted me over to her house to watch the Rugby (okay I admit, I have no clue what time it was meant to be on TV). I went over there and she cooked me food. Awesome. After the Rugby Match (do I look like I care who won?) I went back to my house and worked on my latest Database Idea for WoA. It works really well, we're going to call it Ermantrude, the last one was called Smythe. In the evening that Lady I watched Rugby with earlier came over because she was bored, we played computer games and it was really good fun. We then went for a walk on the beach, I found a crab and caught it (yeah, it doesn't take a lot to please me), I promptly ran after the lady while holding the crab. I found it really funny. After walking said Lady home I went back onto WoA to find everything ticking over smoothly, the automatic systems working like a charm. Someone had also emailed me asking if they could buy a copy of some of the stuff I'd written. W00t. As you can see, there are some slight differences between what actually happens and what really happens, yet, they're not all that different are they! I hope that made visiting my blog worthwhile for you, maybe next Saturday will be somewhat more realistic yet just as interesting.

Ultra Rubbish - Friday

Morning lectures were overall, boring. Moving on, I got home and carried on working on Phil the Database. I did some WoA stuff and then played Halo 2 with Huw. In accordance with the wishes of Zorg, I killed Huw (ingame, not in real life), despite the fact that we were playing co-op. Yes, Huw was a little confused but I had a tank and he didn't so it was okay (for me anyway). I installed some new extensions for Firefox and they broke it. This meant that I had to download Firefox 2, it's had a lot of bad reviews but so far it's not been too bad, though, it is a little slower than Firefox 1. Apparently it causes iTunes to skip, it's happened once with me. I later went to see Jonathan and talked to him about Baptism (it's on the 19th for sure now), about what it means and why. We had some interesting tangents (it's like hall group all over again) but for the most part they were good and I'm glad I talked to him. After that I had a light dinner and went over to Richard's house. We chatted about various geeky things before going to blockbuster. Richard's housemate Jimmy came with us as did Ryo (actually called Richard but normally called Ryo). We rented a film called "Ultraviolet". It is basically rubbish. The plot was clearly written by an inebriated 3 year old. I also suspect that while said 3 year old was writing the script, they were snorting hamsters up their nose. After 5 minutes of it we just started to mock it which it turns out was most amusing. Jimmy can be quite witty and both Richard and Ryo at least tried. I'm sorry that today was so boring. I'm not overly expectant that tomorrow will be a whole lot better.

Cold - Thursday

Yes, it was a bit of a chilly day today. That is, until I walked more than 100m, at that point my circulation kicked in and by the time I was almost at Uni I had taken off my coat and was walking around in shorts and t-shirt. I saw two ladies walking along in coats, scarves and trousers, shivering and there was me carrying my coat and actually feeling very warm. One of them spotted me and gave me a look that plainly said "you must be joking". I of course grinned back. The lab went well, afterwards I saw the people about placements, filled in some form I was apparently meant to fill in a while ago and sorted out a few details. I then walked back and continued work on Phil the Database for WoA. In fact, I did that for most of the day, over dinner we watched V for Vendetta, I think it might be my new favourite film. Sure, it's not one that's worth watching all the time but I like it a lot and rate it very highly. In the evening I carried on with Phil the Database. In total today I quite possibly spent 7 hours programming, maybe only 6. I think that any placement involving programming will suit me nicely. Now for the title, I sit here at 2315 and my toes are cold. I think my window isn't overly heat retentive, is this a problem? No, I am very very good at living in low tempreatures, I just need to make sure that I move around a little more than at present.

Time to shine! - Wednesday

First of all, I laughed at Gareth because he had an 0900 start, my meeting thing was at 0930. I left at 0845 to get there for 0915, I somehow got there at 0900, odd, I somehow shaved 10 minutes off an already tight 25 minute walk. Ah well, I sat in the boardroom for half an hour alone but with an internet connection. I even WoAed. When everybody arrived I noticed I was the only student, I think there were meant to be other students but they were not there. Did that bother me? No. Overall most of the meeting didn't concern me, we had a big talk about the website which was re-done and by majority agreement, is rubbish. It was re-written to meet web-standards, unsurprisingly it failed validation so I'm unimpressed. I've emailed the lady incharge but have had no response yet. After the meeting I sat in the Anglesea building and did some programming of "Phil" (yes, that's the name that won). I plan to give similar names to other parts of the database as they're created. I then attended Salem's lecture, he said he'd updated the slides from last week, never actually mentioning that he'd made a mistake. Anyhoo, I then went to the Prayer Lunch. I brought some Toffee Squares as created by my Mum, they went down well. In fact, everybody wants my Mum to make some more in time for my Baptism (19th), my parents are going to come down for it (it was postponed because they were on Holiday last time). Should be fun. After the Prayer Lunch I walked home and did more database stuff, I also did some more of the PHP 2nd Example and thought about what I'd need to do for the Tutorial on it. All in all it was time well spent. At 1915 I met Justin and Ceryn for Christianity Explored training. We went around to Matt's house (he's a member of Solent Church) and we watched the Alpha Course training video (it told us how to deal with small group discussions) and was not only informative but funny. It has been quite cold today but that didn't stop me wearing shorts in the evening, (trousers in the morning because I thought I should look "normal" for the board meeting) apparently I should have been cold. After the video I walked Ceryn home, we had an interesting talk about the muggers and how to deal with them. I got back, found some nice Emails in my inbox (nothing from the person incharge of the Uni website), chatted to some people over MSN, carried on work on Phil the Database. It's not working as well as I'd like (specifically there's one part of one page that just doesn't seem to work). It's most odd but it's also 0042 which may be impeding my ability to program, you never know.

Jesus: 1 - Hallow's Eve: 0 - Tuesday

Up early, got to Java lecture, sat through Java lecture listening to something I learnt when I was about 16 (if you want to think more of me, I taught myself this part from books, not taught by a person). Overall not at good as normal but it's gotta be covered. Surprisingly enough, most of the class don't care. I've managed to identify at least 12 people that do care, they're all in the same lab as me which is rather handy. After the lecture I sat down in the Anglesea buidling for an hour before going to see my tutor. After seeing him (he said I can use him as a reference which is kinda neat) I carried on sitting down. While sitting down I did of course peruse WoA and spent my time very well making an extended Timetable. There's a slightly higherquality version here for those with a nicer connection (might not display as nicely in IE either, it's a .png). As there's currently no key for it, the yellow going to red gradients represent when I anticipate travelling, the yellow to green is also travel. One is to Uni, the other is from, you can work out which direction is which. Also note that the Tutor session is every other week (I missed it last week so went this one to catch up). Also, I have this semester 2 or 3 labs sometime in Thursday afternoon, they're one off but quite long. For those that think this is really snazzy and want a version for their timetable, I'll happily make one for free. There's one problem. I will know your timetable and can ambush you as you walk around Portsmouth (assuming you live here). After the Tutorial/WoA session I went to Software Systems, we're learning about UML and it's not making a vast ammount of sense. By that I don't mean that I can't understand the language, no, I just find it hard to see where I will use it. I somehow come to a conlcusion without using it and it all works nicely. Still, if I'm going to get a placement next year it might be worth putting in the extra effort here. As clearly labeled on the timetable I walked home and umm, did a lot. By "a lot" I mean that I had a nap. Walking back in I attended Digital Electronics. Last year this was a subject that I struggled with a fair bit, it's not my strong point. Today we were doing diagrams on the board, seeing as I use a text editor you'd think this was a problem. Not so! I found a solution (based off of my experiance of programming languages) that allowed me to represent the diagram in text. After Digital I attended more Software Systems but by the end was too tired to to go to the Data Coms tutorial so instead walked home. I walked home with a gentleman called Mathew whom I met last year at Langstone, it was quite nice (he's still living in Langstone so was happy to have company for the first half of the walk). Getting home I had a delicious and nutritious pot noodle dinner (nutritious for a programmer anyway) and spent the evening working on my PHP tutorials for the denezins of WoAm, though, the tutorials are open to all and apparently easy to understand. If you're interested, go to here to see them, you don't have to register to read them, though if you want to post replies to a topic you will, we've had problems with spam bots and this was the only way to solve it (combined with a custom Spambot blocker I wrote). Now for why the title says that Jesus is beating Hallow's Eve. Very simply, my housemates said that I could deal with Trick or Treaters. A sum total of one group turned up but I enjoyed it. The two girls (yes, girls not ladies) were dressed as something meant to be scary, the parents stood at the edge of the path to our door keeping a watchful eye on them. Out of the house came something that actually was scary (me in shorts, t-shirt and no shoes or socks). Rather than give them sweets I asked them about why they were supporting Evil and started to talk to them about Jesus. Sadly the children were too high on sugar to understand any of it but the parents both heard it all. They felt they'd met a weirdo and took their children away. Strange that, I didn't realise they wanted sweets until they told me, I just assumed they wanted to hear the good news. Well, maybe that's just me being optimistic. I didn't give them any sweets (they walked off before I could think of anything, that and I wasn't finnished talking about the Gospel). Tomorrow will hopefully be a fun day, I've got a special Faculty of Technology meeting, the one that I'm the rep for that I got voted for. Better yet, I get to miss a lecture for it (and they'll have free food there!!!).

Title not thought of - Monday

I got up, got washed had no or little breakfast and left for my Java lab. There I compelted the work, so did Chris and Gareth. Ionnais came around and saw us sitting around doing nothing. He found it hard to believe that we'd finnished it, well, the three of us program for hobbies and so after being called "sad" we were allowed to leave early. It's okay, I called Ionnais ugly earlier in the lab (he had a very good comeback). We went to Tesco where I spent a whole £1.75 on some food, said food also included my dinner. After two hours of Formal Computing, I was almost asleep and had to leave (along with Chris and Gareth) because I am sure I would have actually fallen asleep in the lecture. It's strange, the first two lectures were quite good. Getting back I did a little work on my CV and continued working on my HTML tutorial, I'm explaining how to create Forms, after that I'll improve the PHP tutorial. Setting up sound tonight was "fun". Steve missed his lecture because he was late returning from Reading. We got the stuff from Immanual and got the Union, after setting up we discovered we still had a fair bit of time so Steve explained what the sound equipment actually does and how it works. Give it a few more weeks and I can set it up myself! After CU we took the sound stuff back (it's impressive how heavy that stuff is) and went to the Pub. I played a game of Chess against Richard Priddy, he's not quite as good as me and lost but we had fun so it doesn't matter who won. Afterwards we had random conversations, I explained the Cookie Theory to a Fresher who was confused and possibly scared by it. After that I walked Siän, Helen and Abi home, just ahead of us were Claire and Liz, they didn't once look behind themselves and were a fair distance ahead of us. They were rather apathetic when I walked up behind them and told them to look behind themselves a little more often. The fact that I can walk very quietly rather fast does help. I got back home, talked to my housemates, got some funny photos of me in a box, blogged and went to bed. Also, my baptism might be taking place on the 19th, I'm sorting out the details with Jonathan, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell the whole CU on the basis that the Church is of a limited size and I know a lot of people.

No, I do NOT have a sensitive side - Sunday

I got up, went to Church, well, started going to Church and instead went to #10 to get a lift from Steve. I could not be bothered to walk today, I was slightly worn out from yesterday. While the rest of them dawdled about where to sit I simply went and say near the other students (coincidentally all ladies). For some odd reason nobody came and sat in the two spaces next to me, Ceryn said this might be because I smell, acutally that's not the full story, I said it might be because I smell and she agreed it was probably that. The service was on Bible Translations. Specifically about the TNIV and NIV. The TNIV's main failing is that it replaces almost every single masculine reference (such as "man", "brother", "father") with something neutral (such as "person", "friend", "parent"). This may not sound that bad until you take into account that it doesn't do it to all of them, thus creating some confusion. Worse yet, in the New Testement, several of the writers quote the Old Testement. In the TNIV they quote the NIV reference, thus making the Bible inconsistent. It gets worse, due to the wording in Hebrews 2:17 of the TNIV it's possible to say that Jesus was bisexual. I don't really think I'll be getting a TNIV, infact, a lot of book stores have refused to sell it! If you want to see more about it, Jonathan gave us the links http://www.genderneutralbibles.com/seven.php and http://www.phoenixseminary.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=223. After the service we went to the Thatched House and had some food outside in the sun. It was very nice and after the meal we tried to put ice-cubes down each other's backs. It was good fun. I got back home and spent a very little while working on WoA and then had to see some people about Christianity Explored. I got there early to help setup but there really was nothing to setup, so I sat and talked to Richard Priddy. He is enjoying his placement and it was nice to talk to someone who is as interested in programming as me. There was free food (I was there to help spread the gospel, honest!) and I had my fair share. As we drew the meal part to a close, the following happened. Matt: If anybody wants to get any more food, there's still some left Me: Can I take some home in a doggy bag? *lots of laughter* Matt: If you can find one, yes So, I went up to the counter, got Richard a pint of water and asked for a doggy bag. I later (to much laughter) emptied a decent ammount of food into it. There was no pudding, which means I really should have brought Toffee Squares along. My Mum made some for me and I was given them yesterday (I'm sorry, I forgot to mention them on the blog) and they'd really have been very nice (there were some nice Christian ladies there too, Toffee Squares are better than Chocolate by a long way!), however, this does mean I can save them for the Prayer Lunch on Wednessday. Linvoy Primus gave his testimony which I found inspiring and good to hear. It's a pity Peter and Gareth decided not to come (that and they had to pay for their dinners). Anyhoo, aftet Linvoy's talk I walked back home, for some of the way Ceryn and Andrew walked with us, after that I walked Emma and Cilla home. While walking home on my own, holding my coat in one arm and the bag of free stuff in the other, looking behind me incase there were people running after me again. I saw a man. I saw lots of people that night but there was something different about him, he was holding a shopping bag and walking very slowly, looking at walls a lot. He reminded me of when I was in year 7 at school and had nothing better to do with my time than hunt for pennies. I suddenly realised that he was probably not doing overly well. I stopped next to him and asked "Are youy hungry sir?". With a slightly depressive and gruff voice, likely from sleeping outside a lot he repled "Stavin'". He was not aggressive, he was not mean, he was just a poor old man who had probably eaten less than me today. I handed him the bag and bade him farewell. I sadly did not have a Christian tract to put in the bag and for some reason, words escaped me (yeah, we all know how rare an occurrence that is) and I walked off. I hope he does okay, the bag contained 4 or so bits of bread (quite nice bread) and about 8 kebab sticks of Chicken (though apparently they had fish in them too but I never tasted that). I think that's probably the best used Free Food I was ever given. I got home and began updating my CV. The Filemaker group emailed me saying they would like a copy of my CV. This is all well and good but my CV isn't really geared towards a programming job, for some reason places like Asda and Tesco are not impressed by the ability to program in 9 different languages or any abilities I might have at designing Database systems. Hang on, wasn't the title of the entry something about a sensetive side? Well, I didn't give the guy the food because of emotional reasons, he logically needs it more than me, I still have stuff left over from Freshers Fayre!