Who watches the Wedgeman?

Wow, my subconscious sounds suspiciously like an irate schoolteacher from a poorly-written drama. I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that I was rarely late to school and that punctuality is, in fact, a trait that many Blackstocks pride themselves on. Probably.

Anyway, what am I late for? Well, the more observant of you will have noticed that it's been 2 weeks since I promised you a real update re: the Beach Party. Sadly, Sean has done that better than I ever could so I'll settle for barely mentioning it instead. I will say that Mike did a great job of proving that I know excellent people. He's awesome.

What else is awesome? The weather has suddenly become sucky and I'm lacking in enthusiasm but I've just remembered that I'm off to Southampton to see a whole bunch of ex-schoolfriends, some of whom I've not had any contact with for 2 years. It should be interesting to see Barty, Fru, HazzaMcAzza Extreme, Twohands, Pilchards, Steamboats, Shredder, Barny, Loz, Dan, Paddy et al again. (No, none of those names were made up by me on the spot. I believe my own moniker was 'Billybob', rather sensible, judging by some of the alternatives).

What else is going on in my life? Oh yes, I'm going to be a hero. Or perhaps I'm not, these things are always difficult. So, I'll leave you with a question - does the world need heroes or are they only necessary in fiction? Answers, as always, welcome via comments/email/confused and angry Milliways discussion.

It occurs to me that 'General' is entirely too general a category for me to be using, but because I tend to cover a few aspects of my life, I tend to feel that I can't actually choose a specific one. There's some ('Cars' for example) that I'll never see myself using. Perhaps ironically.

I got somewhat bored of not blogging and eventually decided that the cure for this was probably to find something to write about. This was a few weeks back, the main problem being that I had very little to write about. Even now, I'm not sure what I have to write about; I guess I'll have a look at the length of this entry and decide from there. I'm back home now and I miss the easy accessibility of having friends not only in the same general area but even in my very own home. The convenience is brilliant, essentially.

I tried to sort out my Ubuntu installation after a fairly substantial computer upgrade (the main reason for which is Bethesda's latest Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, or 'heroin for Will' as I prefer to think of it) today and, in spite of a great deal of help from sits, I got stuck. I'll no doubt go back to it when a more final version of Dapper is released with (fingers crossed) better support for ATI cards. *WARNING, INCOMING HERESY* I can't help but feel that I'll never really be totally comfortable with linux or OSX or anything that isn't based on Windows. [/heresy]; I guess it can't hurt to try the alternatives, though, right?

It's not like I'm a total Microsoft groupie, either, I use Firefox and Trillian instead of IE and MSN Messenger. I hate Windows Media Player with a passion and refuse to let a paperclip tell me if I'm writing a letter or not in Word, but I guess I'm just a lot more comfortable with the interface and stuff. There are some wonderful protocols in Linux that make me go 'ooooh, that's really clever' like ssh, apt, the man pages (my dad was slightly confused when I told him I needed man pages until I explained that it was not quite what he thought) and others. I'm tempted to throw myself in at the deep end a bit and see what happens, but then there'd be no heroin (sorry, Oblivion) at all.

With the recent unblockery of the SUCS games server, we've been getting in touch with our inner gamer with a spot of HL2DM. Having never really played it seriously, I can say it lacks some of the charm of the original game's multiplayer and the singleplayer in both games. It's not that it's bad (although I'm not sold on the design of some of the maps at all) it just doesn't excite me in the same way as CS or CS:S. I guess in my heart, I'm still waiting for NeoTokyo:Source and the joy it will probably bring.

What else is there? Well, in the world of Magic, Dissension is around the corner and probably the sort of thing I should be preparing for properly. After the brilliant and somewhat unexpected success that James and I had being a 2-Headed Giant, I can hope for great things. Unfortunately, I was the head that was just less good at the game. Oh well, if Phil can make Top 8, I should be able to (with a reasonable set of cards - the kind of thing I just never get).

I suppose I still have some work to be getting on with, it's depressing stuff, but the essay deadlines are about a month away and, shortly after that, it's time for exams. I'm sure I'll cope just fine, I'm just not sure exactly when I'll start coping :) Gosh, can you believe that I was wondering if I had enough to write about only five paragraphs ago? Right, now Dave can feel guilty for not posting stuff and entertain us all. That's right, Dave, you're SUCS' dancing monkey. Dance, monkey, dance!

On that slightly surreal note, I'll stop and do something more practical. Until next time, faithful readers. (I feel ever so slightly like Stan Lee - "Excelsior!")

 

Ok, so this won't solely be about Will Wright's latest brilliant idea, but I'll obviously post the link because it would be impolite not to. It's so shiny that my eyes go wobbly and my brain does too. I just hope it's as enjoyable to play as it actually looks.

What else is as enjoyable as it looks? Probably only bad things like falling off cliffs. That probably sucks. I'm getting fed up of complaining about work so I think I may just abandon this entry and go and do something better with my life. Like that work I mentioned. There may be an update by Sunday, I guess we'll wait and see. 

Following Sean's blog link thing, I've discovered that I love 'charity work' and fall in love too easily. Right. I've never really been one to fit into set moulds, perhaps there's a 'You're a person-hater' one out there: 'You dislike all people, especially children and often attack them on sight. In love, you long to find someone who understands that the rest of humanity is stupid in the same way you do. In work, you love to go 'postal' on your colleagues and tend to be fired on a fairly regular basis for this. Your style tends to be "bloodstained overalls, hockey mask and optional chainsaw accessory". You're a freaking lunatic.'

But, I digress. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is superb. Ulysses is too damned thick for me to get much in the way of meaning. It reads like a series of connected short stories, unfortunately, the short stories are all about a paragraph long which makes it somewhat tricky to read. I had the best lecture I've ever been in this morning and was buzzing on some strange sort of endorphin high for a while afterwards. Luckily I was able to calm down a bit before posting this. I think this afternoon I shall appreciate the fact I'm now the proud owner of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Volumes 4 and 5. Hurrah, I rather look forward watching them. In other news: I'll be Furi-kuriing all over the place this evening as the anime society are showing FLCL which will rock more than an avalanche. Still the strangest anime I've ever seen. Probably one of the stranger things I've ever seen. This show weirded me out more than the drug trip in 'Easy Rider', than the fire extinguisher on fire in 'Look Around You' (also seen/ripped off in 'The IT Crowd' more recently) and more than the concept of counting to purple backwards (follow the link and be a bit unnerved).

What else? Well, there was a SUCS party (which there are apparently several of each year all of a sudden) and things were... not too bad. Perhaps I'm mildly prejudiced because I had to clear up. Oh well, it seems that people enjoyed themselves and there was even (supposedly) a reasonable photograph of me taken. To quote Frosty: 'I'm incredulous'.

Well, term seems to be back and I'm slowly getting into the swing of waking up earlier and doing stuff. I've still got rather a lot of reading to do: James Joyce's 'Ulysses' being the most impressive. 933 pages of modernist experimentation, I hope I survive the journey. Today I'll be starting the Shakespeare. I'm not entirely certain which plays we're going to look at (I've got a shortlist of eight (it may not be a shortlist, actually, I'm not certain) to read over) but it should be very interesting to find out. It should also be interesting to meet some of the people there, hopefully. The only minor gripe is that a seminar of hopefully no more than 20 of us seems to be in the enormous Arts Hall/Taliesin Annexe. Oh well, at least I know Glyn Pursglove has the ability to project his voice and be generally an excellent lecturer. I look forward to it all.

What else have I been up to? Well, I managed to get together with James, Phil, Mark, Mike and Sam for a very, very great deal of gaming indeed which was generally enormous fun all around. I sent almost my entire army on a brutal forced march from Siam to Central America (the long way around, via the Middle East, Africa, and all of South America). If I'd managed to kill just seven more troops, the game would have been mine. Curses etc. Fortunately, my insane plan seemed to inspire insanity in all the other players who, in true WW1 meatgrinder style, mashed their armies into one another and eventually got killed. Phil won by not rolling as badly as everyone else (especially Mike whose luck seemed appalling).

Other than that, I've been enjoying Fable (even though getting my save game from home to work seems to have proven to be impossible) as an evil mage. I always feel like Emperor Palpatine, cackling as lightning projected from my fingertips fries my enemies. It was really nice to go home and see my parents, actually. It made me realise how much I miss them sometimes because they're fun and nifty and stuff. If you guys are reading this (and dad probably is) then you're awesome. Andy, if you're reading this, I'm sure you've got some work you're meant to be doing... or you could play Wind Waker... [mystical fairy voice with sparkly sounds in the background]wiiinnd waaakeer.[/mystical fairy voice with sparkly sounds in the background] Right, back to the real world, I think. Until next time...

Hello. It has come to my attention that people dislike the fact that I have low self-esteem and refuse to accept certain truths such as 1) I am shy and 2) this means I don't like talking to people and am not good at it. This cannot continue, for you see, in spite of how it appears on the outside, I'm actually a miserably old goat when it comes down to it.

On a different note, those essays I was complaining about are all done and dusted and I now have more to worry about. I also have to sort out the Trans-Bots game I'm supposed to be running on Monday (clashing horribly with anime). I'm not sure exactly how long it'll take to finish everything up, but hopefully things will be just fine, if I'm lucky. What else is weighing on my mind? Ah yes, Christmas. It will soon be that thing. Hopefully I'll survive it just fine once more and I can head into the New Year etc. with excitement and panic of aforementioned new essays as well as the fantastic thing that is having an exam. 

Still no news/internet access from NTL. They are not my friends right now. I'm missing home a bit now, perhaps this is due in part to the fact I'm having to do the odd bit of actual work here and there and my social life is getting ever busier. I'm tired already from walking from my house to campus to my house to Tesco's to my house to campus and I've got more stuff to deal with before I can go home. Before I leave, I'd like to give a big thank you to Graham (chckens) for putting me on the SUCS Planet. That's useful and kind of him. He also deserves a minor cursing for the particularly poor photo of me he's managed to find. So thanks and curses, Graham.

Looking forward to meeting all the new Anime geeks tonight, all the new roleplaying geeks tomorrow and all the new SUCS geeks on Wednesday. Maybe it's time I organised a bit.

EXCITING UPDATE! Wow... good old the edit function. Anyway. having wandered from the SUCS room to JCs for the anime social, I met up with the gang and one or two confused and scared newbies. I'm told it was rather better than the one last year. We ended up wandering around in search of one of Yann's pubs (Yann rocks, he's so cool that he rocks my socks all the way off my feet and a couple of yards down the road). We eventually found a table large enough for the 13 of us and had some serious fun and discussions about bits and pieces and even managed to mention anime and manga once or twice (it's a well-known fact that during anime showings, all we talk about is roleplaying and during roleplaying events, all we talk about are comics. Oh the irony.) Wandering around in Swansea on the way home, Yann popped into local Swansea lunatic, Mark Burgess', house to borrow silicone. A very scary experience but I'm sure Mark's ok when you get to know him. Anyway, that was enough for me and the end of a long day. I'll write more about my seminars another time.

Another update to my life for those people still reading. I've been frantically attempting to organise the SUCS Freshers' Fayre stuff to try and get us dozens of members. Contrary to what the other blogs are likely to tell you, I didn't spend all of my time trying to chat up girls, instead I was talking to anyone who might have been interested (especially people who might have been interested without knowing it). The house is fine and I'm learning to deal with the few little niggles which arise from moving to a new place like having no duvet and no rail in my wardrobe. I'm not certain exactly how much money I'll be spending this year but I think I'll take a tally of how much I spend in a week next week (it's probably not an average week as I'll need things like books and whatnot but it should give me an average idea).

 The new SUCS members seem fun and I actually surprised myself with my public speaking ability, particularly the number of people I seemed to interest in computers, I worked out answers to nearly every comment made to me, including some bizzare things: 'me and computer's don't mix' whatever that means. I'd hope that nobody mixes with computers as it implies they'll be some evil cyborg type. Scary.

I spent rather longer staying awake last night than I'd planned as James, Beardy Phil, Hobo Jed and Michael Howard (not the Conservative leader, thankfully) turned up and demanded Fallout roleplaying. Who am I to refuse things like that? It was great fun as Fallout always is and as spending time with those guys always is too. Anyway, I'll doubtless be updating this more as soon as I have more permanent internet access. I miss broadband but am still appreciating being in SUCS. 'The best society I joined last year' as I told many, many freshers on Wednesday and Thursday. It's true, though. Great bunch of people doing nice things together. Brilliant.

 (p.s. GOGORAVNICA! Time to start drafting Magic again, I think, even if it eats my money like a silly, silly thing.)

Hey all you people out there in the wide world of the internet. You're cooler than you seem.

Anyway, this blog code seems fantastic now so once again many thanks to rollerwhotsit and co. who undoubtedly were involved.

I now have a job. Cards go from being unsorted in boxes to being sorted and packaged in different boxes. I'm involved somewhere along the way. It's extremely dull and I'm not sure exactly how long I can stick at it. I'm also not sure exactly why I'm doing it. I guess my student loan will need repaying eventually so that's a long-term goal (even if I'm not making nearly enough money for it!).

I went back to my school today for my brother's Prizegiving (he managed to win just the two prizes this year, almost a disappointment, really!). It was rather shocking stuff seeing all his friends looking more grown-up than me. Nice to see some of the teachers, though. The ones I got on with ok, that is. Feels like I've been away much longer than a year. All very strange stuff. Anyway, it's not exactly late but I still feel I should be getting to bed as everyone else in the house has disappeared. Silly people. I never had this problem in halls, you know, there was always someone singing drunkenly in the corridor at all hours... On second thoughts, perhaps silence really is golden.

In the meantime, GTA: San Andreas is like a miniature little world where I don't have to work and where I can drive and get cool haircuts and be rich and fly planes and sail the seven seas and more I've not got the time to mention so I suggest you all play it until you're totally sick of every single song on the radio (and then maybe you should put some .mp3s (all of which you already own legally, of course) on for custom stuff and enjoy the game all the more.) Sheer brilliance.