Hello
I come to inform you that this blog shall be not updated very regularly at all, for the simple reason, there is a better one to go to. This blog may be updated from time to time, but overall i find that this new project (or not so new....) is going to be much more fun than writing about myself to no one.
In any case, see ya around
Josh
Friday, 9 May 2008
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Lets eat breakfast!
Wow.
At last I have time to add something to this sparsely populated blog. I'd post more, but I'm sure the majority of people reading this realise that I should be doing revision. This usually involves me spending this browsing around the various revision websites, simply because I am infront of a computer.
I contemplated doing some old fashioned news watching, finding some article that annoyed every nerve in my body and writing and ranting about it. But I managed to see the BBC breakfast news a few mornings ago, and decided to rant about that.
I used to be a sucker for early morning TV as i was in too much of a coma to do anything else. Now, since I've taken to going on the 'net early and browsing stuff on that, TV comes in second or third best. Now, to be honest, there are two channels you watch in the morning, either BBC breakfast, which is not really breakfast at all, as i've had more substantial meals on a school trip, or GMTV (GOOOOD MORRNNNINNG TV, yet they never actually say it). I used to watch GMTV, but eventually got tired of insane presenters, completely irrelevant and cheap reporting and basically it being a complete load of offensive crap.
Since, I've watched the BBC version, which is filmed in a big open studio, with big screens and a sofas etc, and a coffee table, where it and what's on top of it never actually change. The presenters were ok, but i really only tune in to the sport section (7:35, the bloke is the best presenter they have). But recently, one of the female presenters has suddenly devalued the entire show and its contents.
Its been about 3 weeks or something in a row where at certain points, she's burst into tears, laughing her bloody head off over, I dunno, may as well be every single comedy show ever conceived has been flashed in front of her eyes, in the space of 15 seconds. I aint bothered about the fact she may be laughing at something generally funny. But what boggles my mind is that they return from a link up of someone talking about covering your garden in tarmac (opened my eyes it did), to her holding a instrument made out of car parts, unable to talk and doing her best impression of a acidic reaction.
Had she never seen the bloody thing before! It can't of been that new, as they have to be briefed on what topics they are going to do. I could not believe they had let her onto a live show, the other presenter even tried calming her down, but he failed, but if he'd managed to calm her down, he possibly would of been hired as some kind of therapist. So thats enough crummy news for me, sorry Mr Sports guy, but the BBC sport website is easier for my sanity.
In other news, next Thursday, it seems likely that half of the teachers at school will go on strike. I did go looking round for more details, but failed. We are been give more information tomorrow but word is that you can either come in to a special place and do coursework or something, or stay at home, though that last option seems unlikely. Amongst all this, word around the students is that they are going to go on a predictable strike about teachers being able to look through your mobile phone if they confiscate it, for illicit material etc. Please grow up guys and just keep your hidden away, as you'll lose any strike or protest. I won't be joining, as it causes far more trouble than its worth, and my phone camera is too crap to take a decent video of a teacher and make it look like they have danced around the class room then thrown a student out the window.
Cya next time, whenever that is!
Josh
EDIT: Hopefully, me and my next level buddy Matt will soon be recording a podcast of some description. Just need to spend some money first....
At last I have time to add something to this sparsely populated blog. I'd post more, but I'm sure the majority of people reading this realise that I should be doing revision. This usually involves me spending this browsing around the various revision websites, simply because I am infront of a computer.
I contemplated doing some old fashioned news watching, finding some article that annoyed every nerve in my body and writing and ranting about it. But I managed to see the BBC breakfast news a few mornings ago, and decided to rant about that.
I used to be a sucker for early morning TV as i was in too much of a coma to do anything else. Now, since I've taken to going on the 'net early and browsing stuff on that, TV comes in second or third best. Now, to be honest, there are two channels you watch in the morning, either BBC breakfast, which is not really breakfast at all, as i've had more substantial meals on a school trip, or GMTV (GOOOOD MORRNNNINNG TV, yet they never actually say it). I used to watch GMTV, but eventually got tired of insane presenters, completely irrelevant and cheap reporting and basically it being a complete load of offensive crap.
Since, I've watched the BBC version, which is filmed in a big open studio, with big screens and a sofas etc, and a coffee table, where it and what's on top of it never actually change. The presenters were ok, but i really only tune in to the sport section (7:35, the bloke is the best presenter they have). But recently, one of the female presenters has suddenly devalued the entire show and its contents.
Its been about 3 weeks or something in a row where at certain points, she's burst into tears, laughing her bloody head off over, I dunno, may as well be every single comedy show ever conceived has been flashed in front of her eyes, in the space of 15 seconds. I aint bothered about the fact she may be laughing at something generally funny. But what boggles my mind is that they return from a link up of someone talking about covering your garden in tarmac (opened my eyes it did), to her holding a instrument made out of car parts, unable to talk and doing her best impression of a acidic reaction.
Had she never seen the bloody thing before! It can't of been that new, as they have to be briefed on what topics they are going to do. I could not believe they had let her onto a live show, the other presenter even tried calming her down, but he failed, but if he'd managed to calm her down, he possibly would of been hired as some kind of therapist. So thats enough crummy news for me, sorry Mr Sports guy, but the BBC sport website is easier for my sanity.
In other news, next Thursday, it seems likely that half of the teachers at school will go on strike. I did go looking round for more details, but failed. We are been give more information tomorrow but word is that you can either come in to a special place and do coursework or something, or stay at home, though that last option seems unlikely. Amongst all this, word around the students is that they are going to go on a predictable strike about teachers being able to look through your mobile phone if they confiscate it, for illicit material etc. Please grow up guys and just keep your hidden away, as you'll lose any strike or protest. I won't be joining, as it causes far more trouble than its worth, and my phone camera is too crap to take a decent video of a teacher and make it look like they have danced around the class room then thrown a student out the window.
Cya next time, whenever that is!
Josh
EDIT: Hopefully, me and my next level buddy Matt will soon be recording a podcast of some description. Just need to spend some money first....
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Return of the fat arsed work bandit...
Rather than dwell on the title too much (otherwise I'm going to get in a lot of trouble) I feel i need to rant. Now I'm all for revision, as much as it feels like a incredible pain for a bunch of poxy tests that are supposed shape my life, but that's another story. What I am against is spending quite a while doing work, finishing it, handing it in, moving on to looking at some more rubbish topics, to be then told (just before the holidays where i was aiming to relax for a short period before kicking into a lot of revision) 'All that work you did, it's not right'.
For those affected, they know exactly what I am talking about. Now this is different to been given a piece of coursework back as a draft and told what you need to change (usually within a short period of handing it in, you get it back). This is a case of handing it in waiting for over a month, when your mind has moved on to different things, and getting it back, not being told really what you need to do to get a better mark, but get yelled at for 'not putting this in, this in....I told you all this needed to put this in'.
This is usually all met with glancing looks around between the class, the patented 'o shit' position on the desk with your head in your hands and overall a probable feeling of being dumped in a big pile of the brown stuff (coloured if you buy stuff from the ice cream van). Now we have to go back and in some case re make half the work that we have already done, because all of us haven't done something we apparently 'were all told to do'. Now unless I'm being stupid, doesn't it tell you something if 20 plus people haven't done something, that is 'vital' to getting a good grade, we were not told about it.
To be perfectly honest, this has been a problem since the start. Every piece of work in that subject that we have handed in (or me anyway) has not been anywhere close to right first time. I have my own theories for this issue. We have rushed and rushed to get through the bulk of the work, but this plan to get it all done has spectacularly as we have spent more time going back and going over the majority of our work. In my opinion, rightly or wrongly, if there was such a issue time wise, all our lessons should of been planned out better and we should of worked through each piece with more detailed, with regular check on our progress and any issues would be notified.
By doing this, at least we would of had a smaller chance of messing it up and it would allow us to spend less time doing work over and over again.
And also of made people have a feeling of not 'This is the worst subject I have ever done and wished i didn't pick it' to being actually be able to cope with it. However its too late for that now.
For those affected, they know exactly what I am talking about. Now this is different to been given a piece of coursework back as a draft and told what you need to change (usually within a short period of handing it in, you get it back). This is a case of handing it in waiting for over a month, when your mind has moved on to different things, and getting it back, not being told really what you need to do to get a better mark, but get yelled at for 'not putting this in, this in....I told you all this needed to put this in'.
This is usually all met with glancing looks around between the class, the patented 'o shit' position on the desk with your head in your hands and overall a probable feeling of being dumped in a big pile of the brown stuff (coloured if you buy stuff from the ice cream van). Now we have to go back and in some case re make half the work that we have already done, because all of us haven't done something we apparently 'were all told to do'. Now unless I'm being stupid, doesn't it tell you something if 20 plus people haven't done something, that is 'vital' to getting a good grade, we were not told about it.
To be perfectly honest, this has been a problem since the start. Every piece of work in that subject that we have handed in (or me anyway) has not been anywhere close to right first time. I have my own theories for this issue. We have rushed and rushed to get through the bulk of the work, but this plan to get it all done has spectacularly as we have spent more time going back and going over the majority of our work. In my opinion, rightly or wrongly, if there was such a issue time wise, all our lessons should of been planned out better and we should of worked through each piece with more detailed, with regular check on our progress and any issues would be notified.
By doing this, at least we would of had a smaller chance of messing it up and it would allow us to spend less time doing work over and over again.
And also of made people have a feeling of not 'This is the worst subject I have ever done and wished i didn't pick it' to being actually be able to cope with it. However its too late for that now.
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Haha techno trickery works for once
Hello there,
This week i bought a massive hard drive for my 'ps triple' upgraded it (resulting in the terrifying experience of nearly fudging the entire thing up) swapped it round, and installed Yellow Dog Linux 6 on it. Now i have dabbled in linux distros before and found the hardest part of using them is getting out of your mind the things you take for granted whilst using windows. For example, nearly every video player on the web uses flash, or some version. Linux comes with one version called 'gnash' which kinda half works, but not with youtube. But instead of simply going to adobe.com and downloading the new one, you have to do all kinds of fairly complicated stuff for a windows users to get it to work, unless your lucky and there happens to be a .rpm to download.
But, overall, I'm pretty happy with hows its gone. I have the wireless internet working with it, I did some coursework yesterday, have browsed the net, used IM and even done some image editing on it. And I'm writing this blog on it. The good thing is that this linux distro does come with all the open source alternatives to microsoft products, many of which i use anyway. The IM client is quicker than WLM if less flashy, Open office has impressed me and the system is quite stable.
There are a few issues with it. It uses virtual desktops, which are great as you simply switch between them using either the hotkeys or your mouse, but can often get unorganized. I have already managed to create a undeletable folder and the 'shelf' which acts like a very customizable start menu (similar to a mac OS) sometimes gets in the way and no matter what i change, it wont act right...But i reckon these problems will dissapear the more i use it. I still will rely on my windows PC for some things, but this works quickly and efficiently. I'm (slowly) learning more about how all this command line business works, but damn it takes some getting used to, I admit I'm a complete n00b at linux!
The main problem with doing this is you have no times to actually play some games rather than do homework on your playstation (oh the irony). I've completed pretty much all the Orange Box, played TF2 for a bit, blasted around paradise city in burnout and now have bought Unreal Tournament 3. I know for you to enjoy online games you need to put time into them but currently i want to play online:
Apologies for the geeky post, I'm in a geeky mood!
Josh
This week i bought a massive hard drive for my 'ps triple' upgraded it (resulting in the terrifying experience of nearly fudging the entire thing up) swapped it round, and installed Yellow Dog Linux 6 on it. Now i have dabbled in linux distros before and found the hardest part of using them is getting out of your mind the things you take for granted whilst using windows. For example, nearly every video player on the web uses flash, or some version. Linux comes with one version called 'gnash' which kinda half works, but not with youtube. But instead of simply going to adobe.com and downloading the new one, you have to do all kinds of fairly complicated stuff for a windows users to get it to work, unless your lucky and there happens to be a .rpm to download.
But, overall, I'm pretty happy with hows its gone. I have the wireless internet working with it, I did some coursework yesterday, have browsed the net, used IM and even done some image editing on it. And I'm writing this blog on it. The good thing is that this linux distro does come with all the open source alternatives to microsoft products, many of which i use anyway. The IM client is quicker than WLM if less flashy, Open office has impressed me and the system is quite stable.
There are a few issues with it. It uses virtual desktops, which are great as you simply switch between them using either the hotkeys or your mouse, but can often get unorganized. I have already managed to create a undeletable folder and the 'shelf' which acts like a very customizable start menu (similar to a mac OS) sometimes gets in the way and no matter what i change, it wont act right...But i reckon these problems will dissapear the more i use it. I still will rely on my windows PC for some things, but this works quickly and efficiently. I'm (slowly) learning more about how all this command line business works, but damn it takes some getting used to, I admit I'm a complete n00b at linux!
The main problem with doing this is you have no times to actually play some games rather than do homework on your playstation (oh the irony). I've completed pretty much all the Orange Box, played TF2 for a bit, blasted around paradise city in burnout and now have bought Unreal Tournament 3. I know for you to enjoy online games you need to put time into them but currently i want to play online:
- Call of duty 4
- Warhawk
- Team Fortress 2
- Unreal Tounament 3
- Burnout: Paradice
- And other games to go on occasionally,,,,
Apologies for the geeky post, I'm in a geeky mood!
Josh
Friday, 14 March 2008
Well it was a first go i suppose
Hello again,
Though I would upload a recent short video I made for a IT presentation. Now I kinda took inspiration from both Charlie Brooker and Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw in making this video. Now before you thing 'what a judgmental load of crap, hes totally wrong about everything', I may well be, but this was for a ICT powerpoint on various things, and its my first go, may do more in the future, but its whether I have the skill and time to do so. By the way, these will be about as close as i'll get to doing a video blog, I lack the technology!
The video is on Instant Messaging:
(audio is a bit quiet to begin with)
Though I would upload a recent short video I made for a IT presentation. Now I kinda took inspiration from both Charlie Brooker and Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw in making this video. Now before you thing 'what a judgmental load of crap, hes totally wrong about everything', I may well be, but this was for a ICT powerpoint on various things, and its my first go, may do more in the future, but its whether I have the skill and time to do so. By the way, these will be about as close as i'll get to doing a video blog, I lack the technology!
The video is on Instant Messaging:
(audio is a bit quiet to begin with)
Help...please!
Oh boy...
Well, since being told that we needed to complete 5 essays for Thursday, all on topics which are about as easy to write about as the cultural relevance of a plank of wood. I'd done one and a half up till yesterday and thought to myself (in one of these random moments) 'Tomorrow I'm gonna get up at 7am and write some essays'. Both my mate and my girlfriend looked at me like I'd proclaimed I was turning my bedroom into a brothel.
After lots of questions about my sanity, which I was doubting myself, at about 10pm last night I signed of WLM (but left the PC running itunes' 'really good' library wizard, which managed to put the odd album from my library into separate tracks, yet calls them albums), and went upstairs to watch the movie I said I never would get chance to watch. Its not exactly brilliant, ok its kinda shoddy with occasionally acting as stale as zombie bread, but its decent enough.
Then, against better judgment, I play Half Life episode 1 for a bit longer. Then went bed and woke up at 7. Now, basic motor functions are limited when I have a day off and I get up at the normal time. I went downstairs, and just had to put some podcasts on (as the friend who had claimed to join me failed to turn up, claiming his computer had broke, knowing him, I believe it) and sat and wrote 1 and a half essays.
And boy was it boring. I mean boring like, I got distracted at one point with paperclips. So basically I would recommend doing this as a last ditch attempt to get some work done, whether you want to or not. It was truly awful, but its better than me doing it into the early hours, but that sucks even more.
So basically, I've still got two to do, but have just over a week to do them, so will find some time, the problem being is that I don't really have much of an idea of what the write for the two I havent done, not without tonnes of innuendos anyway...
Josh
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
Before we explode...
Well, you join me on the week from hell. No, the apocalypse is not coming round the corner, in fact to the majority of people in this world who ain't living in some war ravaged gutter hole where having the aspiration of finding a bed is deemed 'ambitious', it will seem a rather normal week.
Normally, a day off school is treated as a good moment. A long weekend, the ability to do nothing all day, or to catch up with work etc. But this day, for my year anyway, is different. This is the end of the world, as some teachers are calling it. Now I am not work shy or anything, but Friday is the day most of the coursework needs to be pretty much finished...woop-de friggin-woop.
Now for some topics (those without coursework now feel the ultimate blessing) its all done, but seeing as the day has sneaked up on us all like a 2 stone ninja, its suddenly turned into a mad rush to get everything finished. Cue everyone going insane.
Am I worried? Well, if you'd asked me that yesterday, the answer would be yes, today, well less so. I learnt that overall, its not crucial for coursework to all be in on that day, some teachers are only picking certain ones, and giving them preliminary marks.
So why the panic. Well I'm afraid to say it, but its the only way us humans seem to operate near our full capacity, well us ones in Britain anyway. We are pushed constantly to achieve targets, and told to panic if we fail to meet them. Now obviously, feeling like your head is going to melt is not a an ideal situation, but the more pressure we are put under, the better it all works.
Well that's enough of that rant, now what else I have been up to...
Last Tuesday, its was my Birthday, what can I say, it was pretty 
'The Orange Box' has 5 games made by Valve in it, I can't be bothered to go through each one, as it can be found on the newly uploaded episode of 'The Next level', but seeing as I never had the chance to pick up a copy on PC, I decided to sit down and play Half Life 2, mainly so I could start on the episodic expansions for it ASAP. For a game that is fairly old (for some of you) its an incredible experience, which I completed in less than a week, and addicted me more than even the original Half Life (which I really need to go back and play again now!)
I have been on some of the other games in that collection, but mainly have been split between HL2 and Burnout. As I mentioned, I also was given a book, and I do really like a good read. Its not a story or anything, but is funny, clever and relevant, which gives it a thumbs up in my mind. Also, I really need to get round to watching the movie I got, but seeing as I hardly never ever watch movies, it may take a while.
That was a slightly longer blog than expected, but nevermind eh!
See Ya round
Josh
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