| Blogs of win! part III and many divver things |
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| 05:44pm 25/11/2009 |
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mood:  creative
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Things I feel Strongly About
Gay Uganda
I'm currently on the 8th week of a C++ programming course an I have to say, it's the best thing ever. ( On the joys of C++ )
There has been some source of win, however. I've been accepted for the Student Associates teaching scheme come June, which should be an awesome experience. I've been advised to wait until the new year about possibilities of research placements in the University, but, with the SA acceptance, I won't be able to do any corporate research experience (so goodbye National Nuclear Lab, even if I were good enough to get in) because it would cut into the term of employment. I will definitely apply for other Universities, however - York and Lancaster are the nearest but *sighs* Imperial and UCL would be worth checking into as well, in case I start craving the London scene again.
Last night - apart from an amazing Choir Practise - I attended a discussion about the dissolution [or evolution] of the family unit. ( Dude, some of these paragraphs are pretty long and you've heard it all before... )
*blows fingers*
Oh yes. Choir pactise was amazing. We have a mostly Russian repertoire which includes the Coronation scene from Boris Godunov (which, which - listen to me! - happens to be the musical theme for the 'Fountain of Youth' episode of the Mighty Boosh series 1. Amazing eh? Unfortunately it means I crack up laughing every time the tenors sing 'Da zdravstvuyet Tsar Boris Feodorovich' because those are the exact bars with which the 'King' of planet Xooberon is announced. Ah, lol), two Cherubic hymns (which make me want to convert to Russian Orthodox) and the Polovetsian Dances from Prince Igor. It is all luvverly and now that my throat cold has gone, so wonderful to sing. Magic.
Saturday saw me at Leeds which was even better than the Birmingham convention ( Leeds! )
So... I'm feeling more or less content and have been for a week which is such an improvement. It feels amazing. I suspect I was just doing too much at the beginning of the year, but now I've cut out some societies - unless they're doing something genuinely interesting - I have spare time to focus on my degree, you know, the thing I'm actually getting money for *sighs*.
On a more devious note - because I want you all to be too distracted by the gorgeousness to do any work, comme moi - here are shiny new webcomics:
Moon Town
The Meek
Mathema
The last two are more recently started, so now you'll look extra cool by reading a webcomic not many people have heard of. That is, of course, until I publish this post and my MILLIONS of readers spread the word about their marvellousness.
...
Goodness but I am in a good mood.
Off to break my neck in Jiu jitsu! |
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Read 7 - Post |
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| Today |
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| 06:25pm 13/11/2009 |
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Yesterday was really the epitome of the suckiness of this week, (hence the whiny post) as I'd managed to fail a programming unit, (thus) miss a really fascinating colloquia and piss off my tutor more than I normally do
I know I shouldn't let little things make a rip roaring roller coaster out of my emotional state(!), but, well. I should just try not to take myself too seriously (hahaha, oh who am I kidding?).
EDIT: AW MAN, Kompozer! Why you no download? Look at how well GIMP's behaving. Don't you want to be like GIMP? |
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| 12:11am 21/10/2009 |
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I have a a gajillion saved drafts for posts featuring rantage, comics, boring life and lols stuff yet I've only got round to posting for the sake of these shoes.
I swear, I'll get a handle on my schedule by next week or something and start posting properly. I think I've been suffering from that internet fear syndrome, where you've spent so long away from it, you get scared of going onto it again.
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| Me at jiu jitsu, a summary in picture form. |
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| 08:00pm 02/10/2009 |
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The odd thing about selling out and doing comics by a deadline, is it gets other stuff out of you as well, like the magical ability to whip up a political satire in some three/four panels. It's sort of worrying, actually.
The last of the mystery tenants has now returned. Gio is very pleasant, friendly, easy to talk to and with a good sense of humour. He doesn't seem to mind sharing with us undergrads at all and actively tries to get us all talking which is great seeing as he's the only person who gets on well enough with everyone to make that a success. I actually did some work last night and fully intend to do more tonight. Here I come, Lagrangian dynamics!
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| The Devil does not play fair... |
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| 10:53pm 30/09/2009 |
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Just got back from my first jiu jitsu class and damn it, but I think I will need to get contact lenses after all.
It was a noble battle and at least I lost to a worthy adversary...
( Me and the Jitsu )
And oh wow, Isao Takahata is doing a new film! Taketori Monogatari - one of the Japanese fairy tales I read when I was younger. How awesome is that? I do love me some Miyazaki but Takahata just works the most unbelieveable sort of magic every single time and it's always so original.
Further reason why I love the internet.
I definitely do not love banks, however. You know I've been upgrading my account since May and I still havem't received a chequebook (which I actually need to pay my rent)?
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Read 2 - Post |
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| Sort of rant and yes, I know it's been said before... |
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| 01:50am 29/09/2009 |
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( One of *those* discussions... )
Frankly, this whole debaucle reminds me that maybe my Classics teacher had a point. Maybe we should ditch General Studies and introduce Critical Thinking as a compulsory GCSE or something. And history. I will keep on saying this, but the double standard between expectations of other countries and for ourselves does seem to originate from a lack of historical perspective.
Think about it - there are people alive in this country (UK) who can remember homosexuality being illegal, women not being able to vote or even work in certain fields, people from ethnic miniorities getting fired from their jobs for no reason other than a white person could do theirs, kids with the 'wrong' accent from the 'wrong' social class (or even the wrong church, ffs) being refused entrance into educational institutions. How is it that we can forget just how long it took us, without the meddling of some outside power to get where we are today, that we seem to think it should all come about like magic for other nations that are still reeling from the effects of having their indigenous ruling systems, political philosophies and social mores left in shreds by the impact of colonialism (and I know it's old hat but again, think about it. Nigeria, for one, gained independence in 1960. I have family members who were born in the British Empire. Would it surprise you if I said that even they still have a tendency to see Nigeria as an abandoned colony rather than an independant nation? How much more so for protectorate nations who naturally began to see even their own rulers as instruments of imperialism, like Iran and Iraq)? It's bizarre, ignorant and hypocritical at it's most basic. Why not allow them the privilege that we had?
Probably because we don't realise how privileged we were (the last time we had to deal with anything like this was some 2000 years ago with the Roman Imperialistic machine, after all). Good god but we're appalling.
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Read 11 - Post |
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| 07:19pm 28/09/2009 |
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You know Mandelson, maybe if you guys had been better at self-promotion, communicating with your electorate and perhaps not going to fucking war like a bunch of idiotic Kipling-fed public school boys, Labour wouldn't be 'fighting for it's life' right now?
What is it with these people?
( Fresher's week, first lectures and other stuff )
And I have books! So many books! I can't believe how much I've spent in charity shops on books thus far, not to talk of the library ones. I'm so ridiculous. I still need books on C++ and Advanced Dynamics as well so clearly I'm going to have to snap out of my slothful habits and get back to studying. I used to be so good at it, but then A-levels came along and I became the disillusioned youth you all know and love so well...
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| On Cooking and stuff |
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| 06:23pm 25/09/2009 |
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The main thing I have to get used to when it comes to cooking for self is the difference in proportions. ( Of culinary stuff and the wonders of Maggi... )
I went to a plant fair yesterday and bought a small flowering cactus and a... something or other (it has a lone purple flower-like leaf sprouting from the middle and long thin leaves spread around it. I've completely forgotten what it's called). I was going to get a flytrap, but the only ones there were tiny babies that took a while to close (the, um, whiskers(?) weren't fully developed so it couldn't feel whether something was landing in it or not); I think I'll just save up for a bigger one.
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Read 7 - Post |
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| 11:28pm 21/09/2009 |
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I hate that goddamned Alpha Course. Why can't these people just STFU? No one likes you, and by this I mean NO ONE. |
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| On the new flat, comics and District 9 |
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| 06:48pm 20/09/2009 |
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mood:  but happy at the same time...
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Arrived in Manchester yesterday after the train was delayed by over an hour. Got the key to our house, chose a bedroom and proceeded to indulge in a riot of silliness with my little sisters before traipsing off to the city centre to get bedsheets and stuff. Unfortunately, there was too much stuff to get, so I'm leaving most of it for tomorrow and Tuesday. So far, I've only met one of our surprise flatmates and luckily she seems quite nice, though clearly prefers her own company which is fine. The other guy - named Giovanni and yes, he's actually Italian - is apparently very easy going so all in all, that bodes well for the rest of the year.
( me and my comics )
Now I'm all on my lonesome (sort of), with my beloved little sisters hurtling back Londonwards on a train and a depressingly long shopping list by my side. I'd like to think we had a thoroughly good time today - we were exhausted for a lot of yesterday which cut down our walkabout of Manchester - firstly at the Manchester Museum (which is such an odd jamboree of all things scholarly, I always liken it to a Victorian gentleman's chest of curiosities. There are dinosaur skeletons, live snake, frog and lizard enclosures, a plethora of stuffed animals and Ancient Egyptian mummies. The eclectic sholarliness is just insane!) and then around the shopping centre. My loving hatred of American Apparel has been successfully rekindled as has my littlest sister's obscene love for it.
( District 9: so many spoilers ahead, this post has gone black with decay. My apologies. )
So, to sum up, 'District 9' is very very good. The jarring shift between documentary, realtime footage and traditional narrative is easily smoothed over by the pace and emotional potency of the film. There are indeed race issues, but not of the kind which are deserving of a boycott.
You can, of course, do so anyway, but then you'd miss out on an opportunity to blog about it.
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Read 10 - Post |
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| And here's one for the thinks... |
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| 05:38pm 17/09/2009 |
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...did you know that Tyrannosaurus Rex lived in family groups? In the unlikelihood of a 'Jurassic Park' scenario, I feel I'm safe in finding this fact rather endearing.
And I just got this from physicsworld titled 'The Quantum Life'. Pretty fascinating stuff. I'm a bit annoyed that that's the only one out of three articles I wanted to read that I apparently have access to. To send me email notification for articles I'm not allowed to read is such teasing (and they seemed so interesting too), bordering on cruel...! *sniffs*
EDIT: Coming across this article is one of those bizarre coincidences. I was actually (loosely) discussing Shah Hussain yesterday on my way home from the NT with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) athenethequeen and here he is mentioned by name in a Times online article.
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Read 3 - Post |
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| Dorian Gray (again), Mother Courage, and Mmoa, the inspirationalist! |
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| 04:03pm 17/09/2009 |
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Did a short talk at my old school with the current A2 Physics students. ( Moi turned inspirationalist )
Tuesday evening saw myself and my sisters at the cinema to watch Dorian Gray again, mostly to pick out the things we really hated about it (yes, yes, I know. Does it really surprise you that I should turn out to be one of those annoying people who stay at the end of the credits and start comparing film studies lectures?). ( Just for emphasis, 'Dorian Gray' has problems... )
Other strands of stupidity included the randomly inserted 'abuse by evil grandfather' backstory to Gray (and can I mention how tired I am of the 's/he abused me because I reminded him of her/his dead daughter/son/whatever, who was my mother/father/whatever' thing. It's bloody stupid) and the CGI painting. When I first watched the film, I rather liked it. Now, it just makes the conceit far too absurd to be effective. It's no wonder Wilde considered the book unadaptable for stage (and presumably film if he'd known of it).
( Mother Courage and Her Children )
Hopefully off to see District 9 tomorrow. I know there's been some talk of racism with the portrayal of the Nigerian gangsters, but part of me can't help feel it sounds somewhat realistic. Whilst the rest of the world quakes in terror at the arrival of an alien menace, we would probably be finding which bits increase the virility of the male human and which bits we could sell as suya meat.
That would be before we take over the world, of course. Alien bush meat and Malt Guiness would make for a truly terrifying combination.
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Read 4 - Post |
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| I have discovered... |
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| 03:15am 15/09/2009 |
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...that there is nothing odder than going up to a bathroom sink and interrupting a large house spider in the middle of it's toilette. Who'd have thought you could feel embarrassed by peeping in on a fusty arachnid?
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| On Dinosaurs and Dorian Gray |
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| 09:01pm 13/09/2009 |
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( First, the dinosaurs... )
Anyway. I really shouldn't be judging such awesome creatures by our standards. I mean, we're stupid.
( Dorian Gray; Spoilers ahead ).
Ah, I don't know. It was just generally disappointing. I don't know if it's because I ate a snicker's bar before watching it, or drank sparkling water or whatever. It all seemed a bit pointless...
...with absolutely nothing to say about today's celebrity culture, actually. Sorry Mr Director, but maybe you should try for another film studies thesis because you were talking out of your arse. Grrr.
*coughs*
I have been absolutely pathetic this week. I did go out to the British library with athenethequeen , but that's been about it. So, I missed several comedy shows, several trips to various London markets and two plays at the NT. I really don't know what's wrong with me - I'd like to think I'm missing Nigeria (or at least, Chinyenye) but I think I'm just being truly slothful. I have done practically none of the outside reading or general work that I was meant to, and have been out of bed by noon on two days out of five. I'm not even mildly melancholic so I suspect it's the whole 'one week to Uni' kicking in. Wonderful.
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