Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler

I’m bored, OK?

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— orudge @ 03/08/2005 2:22 am

Right, this is Ann’s fault, she did it first, and I copied her. It’s one of those long survey things, I don’t usually do them, but this one I did. Also be warned that I was (am) a bit unhappy at the time of doing it, so the answers may reflect that.

I won’t post it on the front page because it’s loooooooong, click the little comments button or the title of this post for the full thing.
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Another month nearly over!

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— orudge @ 29/07/2005 1:50 pm

Long time no see… well, a couple of weeks, anyway. What have I achieved in this couple of weeks? Well, Zernebok Hosting has made a few sales, which is good. The web site isn’t up yet, it’s still being worked on, but expect to see it sometime soon. I’ve also got stuff sorted out with my bank accounts for university, and things are generally not too bad. Oh, and we’ve got a date for moving: we depart from the island of Sanday on the 25th August, never to return… well, not for a while, anyway! That also means I’ve only got 27 more days of 56K Internet access, as we’ll be getting 2Mbps ADSL in North Wales.

What else have I been doing? I’ve been carrying on with my driving lessons, which are going fine enough… probably not going to be able to sit my test before I leave Orkney unfortunately, but St Andrews is apparently not a bad place to do that either. Also got onto the St Andrews section of The Facebook, which is quite an interesting and fun site for meeting and finding out about people at uni, spotted a few familiar faces already! What else have I been doing? Not sure, random stuff, time seems to be going past slowly yet also quickly. It’s odd, really.

That’s me for now, I’ll check back sometime!

Oh, before I go… check this out: Star Wars Episode III: The Backstroke of the West. It’s, well, amusing. 😉

St. Andrews!

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— orudge @ 19/07/2005 4:17 pm

Wow, what a week. As many of my esteemed readership will know, I’ve spent the past week in St. Andrews, having a taste of university life, a little look at the golf, and generally a lot of fun. So, this is an unplanned ramble detailing what I did….

Saturday 9th July

The 9th was my 18th birthday, woo! I went to see Episode III, and was very impressed by it. I then went back to the Kirkwall Youth Hostel, and after a little while, went to bed, to wake up on…

Sunday 10th July

Sunday was a day of travel – catching the Orkney Bus at 9am which would take me down to South Ronaldsay, where I would catch a boat to John o’Groats, to be ushered onto Inverness. Then it was onto the Citylink bus to Perth at 3pm, then onto Dundee at around 5.30pm. Waited around a bit with a full bladder (the toilets had closed a couple of hours earlier), and finally got on the bus to St. Andrews, where I arrived at 7.11pm exactly, to be greeted by the mama smurf, Ann. I was introduced to a bunch of people, and generally started to get settled in, as Ann cooked sausages. Shortly after that, we all ended up down the pub, and had some enjoyably random conversations about everything from Python to gin!

Monday 11th July

Monday, Monday, what happened on Monday… well, during the day, Ann and everyone else was working, so I went out and explored the town. It was rather hot, too – some 28 degrees C, I believe. In the evening, I can’t quite remember what we did… oh yes, I remember, we went down to the East Sands and went paddling! That was quite good fun, we then ended up at the Union I think, on the dance machine and then playing distraction pool. Went back, had fun emptying sand all over the floor, and had more random discussions, I think.

Tuesday 12th July

Tuesday during the day was more or less the same as Monday. I took a load of photos, and the place was rather busy with all the golf preparations. It was even hotter on Tuesday than Monday. That night, we had a DVD night, and watched a few films (Shawshank Redemption, Love Actually, and some randomly uninteresting film called Bullet, I think… I was very tired by this point). Went to sleep, and that was that.

Wednesday 13th July

During the day, much the same as before, I think. I don’t quite remember, to be honest. In the evening, I don’t really remember either. DVDs again, possibly. Ah, yes, that’s it, we watched Ghostbusters. Hehe. 🙂 We did other stuff too, but I can’t for the life of me think what it was.

Thursday 14th July

Ann had Thursday and Friday off work, since the Open was taking place then. We (myself, Ann and Graeme) went into Dundee for the afternoon, where we met up with Dave (Ann’s academic dad) and Jill. Had some fun exploring the wonders of Dundee, and watching Dave look at shirts, hehe. In the evening, we were going to be going to a ceilidh, but then there was some confusion as to who was meeting who when, and we ended up down the Union instead, where Ann and I (who aren’t exactly the best pool players) managed to win a game against Graeme (and indeed nearly won another). Generally, mucho fun was had.

Friday 15th July

Again, I don’t quite remember what we did during the day on Friday… in fact, I think a lot of the day was spent sleeping, although I kept getting woken up by the bloody RBS helicopter that flew around to advertise during the Open, grr! Anyway, I think this was the day the bin was emptied. *shudder* In the evening was the Harry Potter launch night, so we had fun there… pics are floating around in the photo gallery.

Saturday 16th July

Last day in St Andrews, and we had a Star Wars marathon, where we planned to watch all 6 films back-to-back. In the end, we only ended up watching Episodes II, III, IV and V (III was still on at the cinema in St Andrews, which was nice, I enjoyed seeing it again, and we were the only people in the cinema!), but it was still good fun. In the evening, I planned to settle down and read Harry Potter, but in the end it was insisted that I go out, since it was my last night, so I did, and we did have quite good fun. Ann and Suzanne left early, but myself, Jaz, Ciara and Graham had quite a good (but tiring) night. 🙂 It was a nice way to finish my week at St. Andrews, anyway!

Sunday 17th July

Sunday morning, and I managed to get up at around 7.30am after my alarm went off. Packed everything, sorted out some food, said goodbye to Ann, and walked to the bus station. Got on the bus to Dundee at 8.30am, and that was me on my journey! On the bus to Perth, I finally got around to reading Harry Potter (I’d read the first 2 chapters the previous day, but not had time to go further), and I was engrossed in this for the rest of the day. I finally finished the book at 7.30pm, and was quite moved by it, I hadn’t expected that ending! Got onto the ferry to Sanday, and went home. And that was that. 🙂

Well, this ramble has taken a while to write and isn’t all that interesting, but that’s in a nutshell some of what I did this past week. I did have a lot of fun, so thank you to all of those people who were so nice and so on last week. I look forward to seeing you all again in September! 😀

60 days until university, woo! (and 21 days until exam results, the great moment of truth!)

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

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— orudge @ 17/07/2005 10:50 pm

Wow. I never expected that to happen!

I can’t wait for the 7th book!

(a more detailed review will appear soonish, I’ve only just got home… as well as more details on the past week’s activities, and photos!)

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

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— orudge @ 10:47 pm

(note: I meant to post this a week ago, but forgot)

Wow.

(the cinema up here is a bit slow, but after seeing Episode III, this is what I thought. I saw it again yesterday, as part of a Star Wars marathon that shall be detailed in a future post, and still thought it was great :))

Hello from St Andrews!

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— orudge @ 11/07/2005 9:48 am

Well, a quick blog to do just that… I am in St Andrews right now, and it’s been quite fun so far. The 10 hours of bus, boat, bus, bus, bus, bus wasn’t really that fun yesterday, to be honest, but it was nice to finally get there… there was even a birthday cake waiting for me! Woo! 😀

Right, I’m currently searching this system for spyware, because it’s rather slow and tempremental… I’ll check in later in the week no doubt! 🙂

Happy birthday to me!

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— orudge @ 09/07/2005 12:13 am

Today is my 18th birthday, woo! While I’m not officially 18 for another 5 hours and, hm, 19 minutes as of Right Now, it’s the 9th of July, so it will do. 🙂

Right, have I packed everything? I think I have… got a boat to catch at 9am or so, so I’m off to bed now! I’ll update the blog on Sunday or Monday when I’m in St Andrews! 😀

All donations and presents are gratefully accepted, by the way! 😉

3 days to go…

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— orudge @ 06/07/2005 1:22 pm

… until I am 18. 🙂 4 days to go until I head down to St Andrews to see the delightful Pan.

That is all. 🙂

North Isles Sports

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— orudge @ 26/06/2005 3:42 pm

Well, it was the 56th (or something like that) North Isles Sports yesterday, and this year, they were held in Sanday. And Sanday did pretty well. (read: Sanday won :p). It wasn’t too bad a day indeed, it was fairly nice weather, although it got cold by the end. Then there was the dance in the evening, but I wasn’t really feeling up to it, and so didn’t go… watched the 30 greatest adverts on Channel 4 instead, or something to that accord. Ah, fun, fun. 🙂

Right, well, I think it’s about time for a status update! It is currently 13 days until my birthday (hint hint), 14 days until I head to St Andrews, 20 days until Harry Potter 6 comes out, 21 days until I return from St Andrews, 44 days until my exam results come out and 83 days until I head off to university! Looking forward to those dates, anyway.

I’m generally bored at the moment, and so shall say ta ta for now. I’ll post another blog on Wednesday, perhaps. Don’t forget to check out the Photo Gallery, now with some excellent(!!!) pics of Edinburgh from October 2004. Enjoy.

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

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— orudge @ 21/06/2005 2:00 pm

For those who don’t know, “Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin” is a song by Amateur Transplants, who also created the fairly well known “London Underground” song. Just thought I’d slip that in there. 🙂

A brief blog from THE smurf here. First, shoutouts… happy birthday yesterday to GoneWacko, who has reached the giddy age of 17. Now, don’t forget, it’s my birthday in 19 days! More on that later. Anyone else I owe shoutouts to? Might as well give the mama smurf a link again too, she might eat me otherwise. Did I mention how intelligent she is? (Compliment quota still exceeded, eh? Oh well, worth a try!)

So, yes, it’s my birthday on Saturday 9th July 2005, and I shall be eighteen years of age. The plan is that around that time I shall be travelling down to the place that is St Andrews to stay with mummy and basically find my way around, watch Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and do other exciting things. Talking about Star Wars, it’s also possible that I’ll be seeing Episode III on my birthday (yes, the cinema up here is somewhat behind on films compared with… everywhere else in the world, but it’s cheaper than other cinemas too!), which would be somewhat appropriate as I saw Episode II on my 15th birthday, back in 2002, at the Wrexham Odeon. Ah, those were the days… But anyway, I’m generally looking forward to events in July, they should be fun enough. After my birthday, it’s then only a month until the exam results come out, so hopefully they’ll be good!

I got some post today from KGS, saying that I have achieved an award for Young Enterprise, and that I’m invited to the school award ceremony next Thursday. Whether I shall be there, I’m not currently sure, I might be too busy/lazy to go into town to go to school. On the other hands, the boats aren’t that bad that day when it comes to not-having-to-find-stuff-to-do-all-day.

Talking about not-having-to-find-stuff-to-do-all-day, I was in town yesterday for another driving lesson. Had to get up at 6.30am to catch the 7.30am boat, which got in at 9am. My driving lesson was at 11am (so I couldn’t get the midday boat which got in at 1pm, which I normally do – my lesson is usually at 2pm on a Monday or Wednesday). The return boat departed at 4.40pm. Therefore, I had to find things to do from 9am to 11am, and then noon until 4pm, which you might think mightn’t be that hard, but it’s not always that easy, either. I ended up going for walks around the outskirts of town in the morning, exploring roads I hadn’t particularly explored before. Then I had the actual driving lesson, which was interesting, as we managed to get a puncture (the instructor’s fault, not mine, before you say anything :p) and had to change the tyre! Was a bit different, anyway! Then I got some food, which killed half an hour, before heading down to the library for an hour to check e-mail and generally pass more time. I managed to pass time there until around 2pm, when I decided to take a walk along some random roads and ended up at Scapa, a couple of miles out of town. Walked back along the other road, feeling thirsty (I should have taken a drink with me, but didn’t) and hot (it was a fairly nice day), and more time was passed. Bought a paper, went to the ferry waiting room and waited. Caught ferry, went home, and that was about that. Yesterday evening there was a presentation at the local Sanday school by the S3 pupils who went to Malawi last month with the First Minister as a result of them winning the Scottish Schools Africa Challenge. It was quite a nice presentation, but I was rather tired by the end of it having been up since 6am.

Hmm, that ended up being a rather long story, longer than intended. 🙂 And this now shall be the end of the blog of the 21st June 2005!

Calling on the stars to fall…

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— orudge @ 19/06/2005 3:04 pm

THE smurf here. Well, yesterday was the Stronsay Gala, so I caught the ferry out there and that’s what I did. The weather was fairly decent – it was very warm, albeit cloudy, and it seems it was sunny enough to give me a rather red face and a sore neck: the delights of sunburn, eh? The dance in the evening was OK – there were a fair few faces that I knew, from Sanday and elsewhere, so it wasn’t too bad in the end. And catch the silver sunlight in your head.

Come for me and set me free, lift me up and take me where I stand. The boat journey back this morning was very nice, we were on the Varagen, which, for those who don’t know, is a ferry with a nice outdoor seating area. In nice weather, this can be a very pleasant place to sit, as it was this morning. I’m back, now, anyway. Got to get up early tomorrow morning to catch a 7.30am boat (aargh!) for a driving lesson at 11am, which means finding stuff to do from around 9am -> 11am, then noon until 4.30pm! No doubt that’ll be fun.

Oh, I was listening to Oasis, in case you were wondering. Some of you may have recognised various scattered lyrics…

Owen out.

Photos!

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— orudge @ 17/06/2005 9:45 pm

Having poked around Pan‘s photo galleries (oh, that’ll be an extra £25 please, Pan :)) and contemplated such things as the purchase of a digital camera, and thinking about my upcoming time at uni, I’ve decided to create a new photo gallery, which, as the name suggests, will gradually contain more and more photos. Don’t worry, it won’t just be my ugly mug, but other people, places and whatnot, as and when I go places and do things. So, if you’re bored, pop along there… at the moment, there are only 11 or so photos, some of them a few years old, some of them more recent. Let me know what you think, anyway.

Oh, a shoutout to GoneWacko and Rich!

I said I’m sorry mama, I never meant to hurt you…

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— orudge @ 15/06/2005 7:35 pm

Well, it’s been a few days, so I thought it was time for a new blog. This entry is dedicated to one Ann Pan, who it seems will become my academic mother at St Andrews (assuming I get in, blah blah blah). 🙂

I had some post last night – more specifically, a replacement motherboard. So, I went and rebuilt my new system to a bare specification (processor, motherboard, graphics card, speaker), turn it on… “system failed due to CPU overclocking”, AGAIN! Another faulty board, great. It should be posted back tomorrow, and I’ve asked for a different board as a replacement (one which supports PCI Express, since when ordering the A8V Deluxe I’d forgotten that my current graphics card is only PCI and not AGP). Hopefully that won’t take too long to arrive there and be sent back. Stay tuned…

Was in town for another driving lesson today, it was fine enough – went around the town, did some more junctions, then went out into the wild countryside around Orphir and so on. Going out to Stronsay for the gala at the weekend, that should be fun. And it’s now, hmm, 24 days until my birthday, and 55 days until the exam results come out!

Hmm, Pan has just said “hellooo” on MSN, so I’ll post this now. That’ll be £25 for those mentions, by the way, Pan. 😉

Memory upgrade!

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— orudge @ 12/06/2005 1:33 pm

Well, Zernebok has just been upgraded to 1GB of RAM (from a previous 512MB). It was a bit of a nightmare getting here, as the initial RAM upgrade the server company installed was faulty, and caused the server to randomly freeze, which obviously wasn’t a good thing. And this was going on at 4am, so I was rather tired and eventually gave up and went to bed, to wake up finding they still hadn’t fixed it. I blame a bunch of St Andrews sinners for me even being up at that time. But all seems to be OK now, and the upgrade should help performance significantly. 🙂

Somebody save me, I don’t care how you do it

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— orudge @ 10/06/2005 8:21 pm

Well, as previously announced, my blogs are becoming less frequent but hopefully more interesting. So, what have I been doing this week? Monday I was in town for a driving lesson, and while there met up with Jo, who was in 6th year when I was in 5th year, and will be in 2nd year at St. Andrews when I’m in 1st year (assuming I passed biology, blah blah. If I don’t, I’ll be mightily annoyed. But I think I did. But if you’ve spoken to me recently, you’ll have heard all of this before. When one doesn’t have much else to do, one ends up dwelling on things like upcoming exam results). Anyway, it was nice to see Jo again, she seems to be fine enough. I also ended up back at the hostel (which was where I saw Jo), and it was a bit strange/funny as I had to be signed into the building with a visitor’s badge of course… the place doesn’t seem to have changed that much though (in a whole two weeks), a few new faces but otherwise more or less the same. Time for a new paragraph I think.

Ah, that’s better. My previous blog entry, “Prom”, has been popular with commentators… mainly myself and a certain Dutchman who has gone rather wacko, but oh well. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn’t really do that much – got TTDAlter 4.3 a bit closer to release status, but not a lot else, IIRC. Now then, yesterday, Thursday, was the Young Enterprise meal and so on, and it was quite good. We spent a few hours at the Foveran, and, while expensive, it was enjoyable, and we then went onto a couple of other establishments and had fun there… well, some of us, grumble grumble, but anyway. Stayed at Ken‘s for the night, and had a right good fry-up for brunch, accompanied by a hand-picked selection of the finest “Cooking Music” one could wish to cook to! An enjoyable couple of days anyway. 🙂

I’ve decided, to help pass the time between now and September to a point, I’ve noted down a few key dates when known events are occuring, and will use these as ‘signposts’ to help pass the time, in a way. It seems to make sense in my head, anyway. Did you know it’s 8 days until the Stronsay Gala, 15 days until the North Isles Sports, 29 days until my 18th birthday (wootage), 60 days until the exam results come out, 99 days until the start of uni (Freshers week) and 108 days until the start of teaching at uni? By progressively working my way towards a certain target, it helps lower the time until the next event. For example, after the North Isles Sports, it’ll be 14 days until my birthday, and after my birthday, it’ll be 31 days until the exam result come out – breaking things down into more managable chunks. I’ve still got to find something to do in those times between events, of course… anyone got any web work they want doing for instance?

Well, that’s your 553 words* for today, enjoy them, and look after them. I want them back in one piece.

[* Including footnotes and HTML code, but excluding title]

Prom!

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— orudge @ 05/06/2005 5:11 pm

Hmm, just read that a new Crazy Frog “song” is being released tomorrow… another one! This one isn’t by Jamster though, so hopefully (hah!) we won’t be bombarded with too many adverts on TV and so on, but oh well, we’ll see. IIRC, this “song” was actually created earlier in the year, as I think I heard it on Radio 1 back when the Crazy Frog was relatively new, and not quite as irritating as it now is. Anyway.

Twas the “prom” on Friday (still don’t like that word, too American, but oh well) – a very good night it was indeed. As one can see from the picture, I was there with Abigail (thanks to Robert Lamont for the photographs, if you live in Orkney and are wanting photos done, give that man a bell) and an enjoyable evening was had by all. Things perhaps got slightly out of hand on the, hmm, alcohol front, which is generally quite rare for me, but it was fun all the same. 🙂

In town again tomorrow, driving lesson. Oh, from now on, blog entries will likely not be every day, only when I have something to say, which is probably more interesting that way anyway. Enjoy yourselves, and I’ll see you soon.

The adverts are still there

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— orudge @ 02/06/2005 7:27 pm

Heh, they are, you know. I phoned Overclockers today though, and finally got an RMA number out of them, so the motherboard is all packaged up and ready to go when the Post Office opens tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll all be sorted soonish!

Prom tomorrow night, should be alright. Going into town on the mid-day boat, so it means I have to get up earlyish again (ie, earlier than usual). Can be quite an effort at times.

What else? Not a lot, just waiting for a larger percentage of the history of AGMTT to be imported into tt-forums… 😉

Oh, the irony

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— orudge @ 01/06/2005 9:29 pm

Hmm, how ironic: Google gives me adverts for ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboards… Overclockers replied to me on Monday about the motherboard twice, and communication has since dried up. I might see if I can phone them up tomorrow, to see if something can be done, I’m getting impatient and would like my new system up, bleh!

Went into town today at lunchtime, had a driving lesson, it seemed to go fairly well – mainly driving around the town, practice with junctions and so on. It’s Abigail‘s birthday today, so happy birthday to her. 🙂

I’m rather tired now, think I might read a bit and go to bed. Night all!

Monday

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— orudge @ 30/05/2005 7:24 pm

Hmm, I forsee time being quite strange over the next few months, at least if current practices continue. Each day is more or less the same as the next day, or the previous day if you prefer, although there are a few events on the horizon: a trip into town on Wednesday for a driving lesson, this whole “prom” on Friday (a rather over-American term for my liking, but oh well), and the Young Enterprise thingy next Thursday. So that’s my current todo list. Oh, and get this motherboard replaced… Overclockers responded to my e-mail today by asking me about the BIOS and the RAM, but as of yet haven’t replied again – hopefully they will tomorrow.

Downgrade!

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— orudge @ 29/05/2005 2:10 pm

Well, yesterday afternoon, I was very excited, because all my new stuff arrived, so I immediately went and built it. All very exciting, get everything plugged in, connected up and press the power button… “System failure due to CPU overclocking”, says the lady inside the computer. What? I’ve never overclocked the computer, I’ve just built it. I check the manual, and it says “go into the BIOS and change the multipliers” – all very well, but I can’t get into the BIOS, as nothing comes up on the screen. I try other RAM modules, graphics cards, every variety of everything I possibly could do, but always the same. Have a look on Google, it seems quite a few other people have had this problem with the A8V Deluxe, and it’s likely down to a faulty board. So, I’ve contacted Overclockers to get it replaced, now I just have to wait for a reply – of course, it has to be a weekend, doesn’t it? So, I’m back on the trusty old Duron for a little bit longer… 🙁

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