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That's it, first year over and done with. I passed, at least. Bit disappointed with my results (57% overall... damn one of my maths modules for bringing it down so darn much. It would have been in the mid to high 60s otherwise) but thankfully they don't go towards my final classification so time to work 19403921% more next year.

Got home on Saturday after a mind numbingly slow drive home thanks to speed limiters on the motorways. The car was quite literally full to the brim. God knows how I accumulated so much stuff...

Unpacking is such a chore. I've gotten to the point where I'm not even unpacking anymore but rather leaving it all in the spare room and rummaging through it all when I suddenly decide I need something.

Well... that's all I can really be bothered to type out right now. Back to sitting watching Crimewatch (why is it on this early in the morning?) and waiting for numerous parcels to arrive.

kthxbai.

Exams, violins and Braid


Hello world, or just hello approximately 4 people who probably don't read LJ anymore.

Exams went okay...2 of them went horrible. Got one left in about 32 years. Well... a week and a bit.

Bought a violin. Slowly getting used to it. Here it be.



Downloaded Braid. It's bloody difficult.

That's about it.

kthxbai

Thankyou, Popcap. As if I didn't have enough versions of it.

*acquires*

Nothin' better than chicken pie, chips and gravy for dinner.

unless you're a vegetarian.

Om nom nom.

kthxbai

Reporter to a G20 protestor: Why are you protesting?

Protestor: To make the goverment listen; we dont want them wasting our money and taxes.

["YEAH!" come the screams]

Reporter: It's cost £7million in extra policing for you to protest "peacefully" today.

Protestor: ...

To be honest, I don't know exactly what this virus is supposed to do... but it certainl- *computer melts*

The weather was glorious and warm for the last few days of term across the country! I got home, looking forward to strolling around without the need for a jacket.

The next day, grey skies and gale force winds.
The next day, grey skies and more gale force winds.




Screw you, Murphey.

Life update

Re: University course.
Going not-so-bad. I know for definite I've passed 2 modules from last term, so that's 20 credits in the bag. Only 100 more to go. Joyous.
Coursework is really piling up now, it's a pain to keep on top of. What kills any motivation is that darn half-hour walk to and/or from home. You leave lectures with high hopes of getting home and working solidly for 4 hours... then you walk up a hill that could be Ben Nevis' younger brother, across a big field whilst the crosswinds attempt to simultaneously freeze your face and tip you over and by the time you've made it to your room you just want to fall asleep.

It's a real effort to actually get any work started. But I always seem to miraculously manage to come out the other end with above average results.


Re: Living arrangements.
House for next year has been sorted, which is nice. It's a top-floor Maisonette (I guess akin to Shaun/Rob's house in t'Brat'fd), and two of the rooms are... more than generously sized. I know you'll all probably have an idea of a big bedroom. Well they're bigger than that. Plus a little bit more.
The other two rooms are pretty standard, but still decently sized.

Pro: It's closer to university - about 10 minute walk. No big hill to walk up. No unforgiving fields to walk across.

Pro: Relatively cheap for what we're getting. Close to the uni precinct, located in a quiet area, 4 double bedrooms, kitchen/living room combo, washing machine, tumble dryer + all the usuals for about £315pcm. That may sound expensive to some of you who are living in t'narth right now, but for Bristol... that's not bad.

Con: Agency fees and deposits. What a way to leave someone feeling financially kicked in the balls. I was feeling good with +£650 in my bank account. Then -£112 for agency fees and -£325 for the deposit! Ugh. Though, I shouldn't complain... but it does mean I'll have to be careful what I buy over the next few months. Back to Sainsbury's Basics me thinks ;_;

Re: Life
Going to a party next weekend with Sarah back in Birminghamamam. Quite looking forward to it. Also looking forward to a home cooked meal and a double bed to sleep in for two nights. Om nom nom. :D

Off track from that, we discovered Hiatt Baker (One of the other Halls of Residence in the cluster of Halls of which I live within) has a full sized table tennis table in a dedicated room. Seeing as though, recently, our flat (namely the male members >_>) has discovered a penchant for playing table tennis... we've managed to acquire the Hiatt Baker keypad code and have shifted any major table tennis duties from our kitchen to there. <_<

I'm hungry. Going to get a sandwich.

Re: LiveJournal

That's it for now.

kthxbai!

Did a speed test out of sheer boredom in labs today.



:|

Stupidly, the connection with Maidenhead was slow in comparison (76,000kb/s down, 30,000 odd up) and with London it was 80,000 down and 80,000 up.

Man shouldn't have such ridiculous upload speeds! It's dangerous, I tell ye!

Arrgghhh, my face.

I've broken 3Ghz, finally.

Aaron and I were talking about overclocking last night (Really cool, I know!... well, it's actually not. It can be incredibly hot ;) ) I figured that I should, now that I have a better chassis with infinitely better airflow than my previous, give it a go... again.

I had already OC'd my CPU to 2.8Ghz from 2.4Ghz but that was just lucky that it ran stable. I had no idea what I was doing... just fiddling about with numbers and hoping the computer actually rebooted successfully without blowing up after pressing "Save and exit".

So now after a bit of reading up and acquiring a better understanding of what exactly memory timings and DRAM:FSB ratios actually are, I went into BIOS and did what I had to do.

Outcome is as follows:

RAM running at 890Mhz, 4-4-4-12 timings, stable.
CPU running at 3.1Ghz at a cool (for stock air cooling anyway) 33C idle, stable.
Motherboard idle temperature of 40C, stable.

Pretty good, actually, considering it was this before

RAM running at 800Mhz, 6-6-6-31 (WTF?!) timings, stable
CPU running at 2.8Ghz, 32C idle, stable
Motherboard idle temperature of 40C, stable.

So a significant increase at the price of 1 degree centigrade. That'll do.

Still, my graphics card doesn't look too happy, running at 55C idle with the fan going at 60%. I should get an after market heatsink on that...

kthxbai

Christmas is over for another year.

Actually a really really enjoyable one this year. Most of the family was merry on alcohol by about 2pm which made for an hilarious rest-of-the-day. We had the most gorgeous Christmas dinner ever, featuring duck, gammon, three different kinds of stuffing, mash taties, roast taties, roast veg, boiled veg, cranberries and some other delectables.

Most of the afternoon and evening was padded out with opening gifts, playing board games as well as a Wii (which I was unaware my sister had acquired), listening to music and munching on crisps, chocolates or other snacky items.

Everyone seemed to really like their gifts, my dad especially who wasn't really expecting much but got quite the opposite ^_^

More on Christmas later.

kthxbai

Getting back into Paul Simon nowadays

Brings back memories of long car journeys with my dad when I was young. He had the Graceland album on tape and even though I really never paid much attention to it, I always knew the words and melodies to the songs if I heard it again.

I rediscovered the album a good 5 years ago but... forgot about it sometime between then and now.

I rediscovered it again yesterday when Radio 2 played "You can call me Al", causing me to ejacul dig out the CD straight away and shove it onto my iTunes library; I still know how pretty much all the songs go as well.

Is that the sign of a good song writer? One who can make his or her music engrave itself into your mind without you even realising? 

Anyway, point being, it's a terrific album, one of the best ever in my opinion. There's not a song I don't like.

I recommend everyone who hasn't heard it to...uhm...hear it!

I have an unfair amount of work to do over Christmas...

A fairly large piece of coursework to do by the 14th of January, complete with report.
A presentation to prepare by the 13th of January.
A German presentation to prepare by the... somethingth of January.
A German oral exam to ...prepare for by the somethingth of January also.
A Maths exam...  but that's for later on in January so that's okay.
Probably something else I'm forgetting...

Still, a mammoth coursework and two presentations. Ugh.

(I say mammoth... If I knew how to program efficiently, it would take the best part of a day. Unfortunately, I don't).

kthxbai.