Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler

All done!

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— orudge @ 21/01/2006 8:49 pm

Well, all my exams are finished now, at last. 🙂 Had Management and Philosophy on Thursday, they seemed to go reasonably well, I think, so will just have to wait for the results to come out now! Off to Budapest on Monday for a week, so that should be good fun. 🙂

Just a quick blog there today, I’m afraid… dinner’s nearly ready. Toodle pip.

Two down, two to go…

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— orudge @ 15/01/2006 6:50 pm

Well, as the post title suggests, two of my exams have been, and two are still to come. I had Computer Science on Thursday, which was really very straightforward for me – 50% of it was multiple choice! Discrete Mathematics was on Friday, and that seemed to go very well too, so so far, so good. 🙂 I’ve got the more difficult ones next Thursday – Management in particular I’m not looking forward to quite so much mainly because of the large number of theorists and so on that have to be remembered. Philosophy shouldn’t be too bad, but it’s on the same day as management, which isn’t really ideal. Oh well, will let you know how things go. 🙂

Other news now, and I got my new Audigy 2 ZS Platinum installed on Friday. It’s very nice indeed – 192KHz, 24-bit 7.1 sound. 🙂 It does sound notably better than the onboard sound, even when just playing standard 44.1KHz 16-bit stuff. Also got an extra 1GB of RAM, for a total of 2GB now – also very nice. However, typically enough, my graphics card fan has gone and basically broken itself somehow (GeForce 6600GT 256MB PCI Express), so I’ve ordered a new Zalman cooler for it which in theory will arrive tomorrow, but I imagine it won’t actually arrive until Tuesday (do they despatch things on Sunday?). So my main PC is now out of action (the GPU was reaching temperatures of over 100°C at times!) until then, as I’d rather not fry my graphics card. 😉 (I could install my old GF4 MX440, but that’d involve taking a PCI card out, as I only have 2 PCI slots on my motherboard). Bit of a pain, really. However, I’m using my laptop with two monitors now, which is quite nice… I could get used to this. 😉

Right, time for some food, methinks!

Music!

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— orudge @ 11/01/2006 4:12 pm

Inspired by ThorRune‘s blog, I have added my weekly top artists from Last.fm to my site, which you can find hidden in the depths of the navigation bar on the right. (It’s rather long, I know). On a related note, I do like the PHP 5 SimpleXML extension – it really is so simple to use. 🙂

On another vaguely related note, I’ve noticed a lot more cross-blog commentary as such, thanks to the new Planet TT-Forums by Aegir (note that the URL has changed from that listed in my previous blogs on the subject). Keep this up, guys, it’s really nice to see. 🙂

Right, enough procrastination, back to revision. My first exam is tomorrow…

Oh tell me why… do we build castles in the sky?

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— orudge @ 07/01/2006 4:15 am

Ah, I like the bop. It’s much fun. Even when running it, as such.

Exams!

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— orudge @ 05/01/2006 5:14 pm

Yes, it’s that time of year again (well, not “again”, as this is my first year at uni… but it’s that time of year, anyway): exams! Well, revision for exams at the moment. I’m back in St Andrews, after having a fun journey up on the train on the 2nd, and then finding that none of the supermarkets were open so I had no food. :/ Got food the next day, so that was good. Have basically been procrastinating since, but revision is gradually being done, and will likely shift up a gear quite soon. My first exam is Computer Science next Thursday, then Discrete Mathematics on Friday, and Management and Philosophy the Thursday after. It’ll all be over by the 20th, anyway. 🙂 And, after that, I’m going to Budapest for a week, on the 23rd, with my academic mum Rachel, which should be really good. 😀

My new digital camera, a Fuji FinePix E550, arrived yesterday. It’s really rather nice, so expect some more pictures cropping up on this blog and in the photo gallery in the months to come. 🙂

Well, best get back to work…

Various updates

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— orudge @ 04/01/2006 12:00 pm

Happy new year everyone. I’ve updated various pages on the site, including the Links page, the Where To Get It page, as well as an assortment of other updates here and there. As for when the various incomplete pages here will be finished… I honestly can’t say just now. But I do intend to finish them sometime. Eventually…

Happy new year!

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— orudge @ 01/01/2006 1:20 am

Well, it’s now 2006 here in Britain… happy new year to everyone! The fireworks here were amazing, coming from Sanday, fireworks were a rarity in general outside of Bonfire night – I never expected quite what I just saw. The delights of civilisation, eh? 😉

Coincidentally, 2006 means that part of my web site (specifically the really old archive posts on this blog) are 10 years old (well, will be in October). Yikes.

Hope you all have a great year! 🙂

WordPress 2.0

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— orudge @ 30/12/2005 9:00 pm

Well, WordPress 2.0 has been released, and I’ve just upgraded the blog now… seems to be working quite nicely. Has a number of nice new features for me behind-the-scenes, you probably won’t notice any difference as a user though. 😉

On another note, Aegir has created a small page called “Planet Tycoon” which basically contains live blogfeeds from the blogs of various members of tt-forums, including yours truly’s. So now you know.

Merry Christmas!

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— orudge @ 25/12/2005 11:15 pm

Hey all… hope you had a good Christmas. I had a fairly quiet day here in Wales, but it was enjoyable enough. Hope you all have a good New Year! 🙂

Back home

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— orudge @ 23/12/2005 6:13 pm

Well, I’m back home now for Christmas. Things aren’t that exciting really, but it’s nice to not have to cook for a little while. 😉 I realise I still have half a semester to report on, and I will do at some point – probably closer to the end of this month though. The past couple of months have gone insanely quickly, and all of a sudden it’s exam time in January! I’m going to Budapest after exams with Rachel though for a week, which should be good fun. 🙂

Will check back soon, anyway. Have a merry Christmas, everyone.

New version of Foxamp released

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— orudge @ 20/12/2005 6:08 pm

I have released a new version of Foxamp, the Firefox extension that lets you control Winamp from your browser. I have taken this over from sweetfish, and updated it to make it compatible with Firefox 1.5. I also intend to update it further in the future. Check it out, and please let me know if you have any comments or problems.

Blog?

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— orudge @ 07/12/2005 8:46 pm

I will post a proper blog at some point soon, honestly! Ann posted this thing on her journal today, and I thought I’d do it for myself. I think it’s about correct, referring to places that I’ve actually stopped in rather than just travelled through (much of central England and extra bits of Scotland would be highlighted if I was talking about just travelling):

[map service is no longer available 🙁 ]

I’ve visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited?

Ah, yes, my blog

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— orudge @ 12/11/2005 10:23 pm

It’s been a while again, hasn’t it? Quite a lot has happened this past few weeks, quite a lot indeed. On the academic side of things, I’ve had tests and assessments and practicals galore, which have generally gone fairly well I’d say, no major problems so far. On the social side of things, it’s been a busy few weeks. Indeed, I can’t rightly remember everything that’s happened simply because it’s been so long, but one of the main things would be that I’m now going out with the lovely Ellie, which by the way was why I was looking forward to the cinema in the last post. Oh, and the film was very good indeed, I’d recommend you go and see it. 😉

This past week has been Reading Week, so I went down to visit the family in North Wales for a few days on Saturday, returning on Wednesday. It was fun, if only for the steak and the haircut. 😉 (There wasn’t really that much to do, but it was nice to see people again, of course). Since then, I’ve basically been trying to relax, and also get various bits of work done for various things that need doing, academic and otherwise. I’ve also been playing bits of Age of Empires 3 where I can (I have the Collectors Edition, which comes in a huge box, and is actually rather heavy – but very nice indeed) – as a fan of all the existing AoE games, I have not been disappointed with AoE 3 so far, although I’ve only played a few of the scenarios in the campaign so far! The graphics are very nice too, of course, which is one of the main ‘features’ of this new release. So yes, that’s what I’ve been doing this week.

I’m just about to upload a load of random photos to the photo gallery now, most of them taken by Douglas. I keep meaning to get a digital camera, haven’t yet done so…

And that’s the end of your random blog for what will probably be the next month or so. Hope you enjoyed it. 🙂

First blog of the month!

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— orudge @ 20/10/2005 3:31 pm

No, I haven’t died, I’m still around. 🙂 Time has been moving so quickly! I’m now in week 4 of lectures, and things are getting busier… indeed, I have a management test in half an hour, and have to leave in about 10-15 mins, so this blog may be fairly short. But things are rather good here, especially after yesterday, for reasons I will go into soon. 😉

Basically… I’ve been attending lectures and doing work for the past few weeks. Started driving lessons again today (had an assessment lesson) and that looks like it’ll go well. Going to the cinema tonight to see Wallace and Gromit tonight. Should be good. ¬_¬ Went to Dundee on Tuesday night, that was good too. Went to Edinburgh at the weekend, most enjoyable. Got Yoda and Gandalf, my two new dedicated servers, set up at the weekend, and moved most sites to it – it’s really fast. And that’s about that for now, as I have to run.

But I’ll write more soon, feel free to post comments bugging me to do this. 😉

.updatestats

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— orudge @ 29/09/2005 9:30 pm

Well, what a week… what a week. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite like it.

For those who don’t know, I am now a student at the University of St Andrews, studying Computer Science with French, although this semester I’m taking modules in Computer Science (CS1002), Discrete Mathematics for Comp Sci (CS1010), Management (MT1001) and Philosophy (PY1001). I’m living in Albany Park, which is a 1970s concrete park with rather small rooms, but on the plus side there’s a nice community and it’s cheap! On the downside again though, it’s a long way from Albany to my lectures on the North Haugh, which is conveniently located on the other side of town. However, my purchase of a bicycle today should make that less of a problem. 🙂

Now then… what have I been doing? Those who do not wish to know/should not know what I’ve been doing, look away now. Hm, well, Saturday 17th was the day I arrived. We (Dad and I) set off at around 5.30am, and got in St Andrews around 11am, which was ahead of schedule, I think. On the journey, I got a phone call from Tom telling me I’d managed to leave one of my bags – conveniently the one which contained most of my clothes – at home… oh dear. We got to St Andrews, anyway, and managed to find Albany Park. Rather nervously, I look for the office, collect my keys, and we try to find house 22. The house numbering scheme in Albany is totally illogical, by the way. Unload my huge pile of stuff into my rather small room, and basically abandon everything and head for the welcome tent. We were one of the first people there, and I was there issued with a huge pile of bumf – leaflets, handbooks, flyers, free sweets, you name it. Dad had a cup of tea before heading back down south and I had, well, a drink, and spoke with the committee who were there welcoming us. Other freshers arrived, random discussions were had, more drink was drunk, and everyone was merry. That evening we had a pub crawl where we went around a few random pubs – I honestly can’t remember which, not due to being drunk but simply because so much has happened – and finally we ended up in the union, where I met many of the sinner lot – Duncan, Richard, Douglas, Rachel, Jen, Steve, Will, etc, etc. Much fun. Ooh, yes, now I remember. Ended up in the bop after that with Will, Rachel and Douglas, and it was actually really fun. For those who don’t know, the bop is basically the closest thing St Andrews has to a club I guess, and usually plays pretty cheesy music for people to rave around to. Not something I thought would really be my thing, but it was good. 🙂 Ended up stumbling back to Albany – ooh, yes, I remember now, haha, I won’t tell that story just now – and getting to bed. Of course, I hadn’t quite made it to Woolworths to buy a duvet cover, pillowcase, sheets and so on by then, so it wasn’t the most comfortable night, but I managed to get to sleep pretty quickly.

The next morning – after getting to sleep at around 3am, I was woken – oh, wait, no, this was the Monday. Oh well, woke up at some time or other, and did… something. Can’t really remember. Went out shopping with a couple of my housemates, I think. Did some random stuff anyway, vaguely sorted out some things, and ended up on the Albany three-legged pub crawl in the evening. My partner unstuck us a couple of times, meaning Caroline and/or Chris had to come back and tape us up again, but it was all fun, and after the 2nd pub I think most people were unstuck anyway! Ended up in the Vic I think where I bumped into Jo, a girl from Orkney who I knew who started at St Andrews last year – and had a good chat to her. Then, I ended up in the union again for the Sara Cox event in Venue 1, where I met with Ann (my academic mum, THE mama smurf!), Emma (my aunty) and Bobbie (my uncle). It was a while before Sara actually came on – until then, Graeme (Ann’s boyfriend and DJ Convener in the union) was getting the crowd going, and it was actually a bit of a let-down when she came on. But, she got better (apparently it was her first live show in ages, and she didn’t know how the equipment worked!), and it was generally a good night. 🙂 At the end of this night, we ended up back at Ann’s house, I think (also conveniently located on the other side of town, vaguely at least), had some fun there meeting more of my extensive academic family, and then back to Albany, where my bed was slightly better, but still not properly made. Went to sleep, had a bit of a weird dream IIRC, and all was fine…

… until 7.30am or so when my brother phoned me up to tell me about the stuff I’d forgot and that Dad was posting it up, and so on. In fairness, Tom had his navy interview that morning, which explains why he was up that early, but I could have done without the early wake-up call… Oh, yes, of course, Dad had tried to phone me the previous night in the bop – if you’ve ever been to the bop, you’ll realise why that didn’t quite work. He probably wouldn’t have heard much that made any sense. Ehm, yes, so… Monday. *consults text messages and orientation guide* Oh yes, there was the Campus Moviefest thing in the afternoon, that was good fun, a number of us hope to take part in that if it happens this year. I must have ended up in the union again that night… ah, yes, that was the hypnotist! Oh, indeed, I remember now. I was happily playing away here on the Internet, when there was a knock at the door and I was invaded and taken away by Steve, Duncan, Richard and Anne, my very nice academic sister from Canada. Ended up at Duncan’s house, randomness ensued, then Duncan and I went off to the hypnotist. We met up with Kat (another of my sisters, this time from the USA) and went in, and it was a very good night. The hypnotist was Chris James, and it was an enjoyable affair – Kat was hypnotised, and it was very fun night, and got me rather intrigued and interested in hypnosis, something I’ve not followed up on yet, but maybe one day… after that, I don’t really know what happened. Oh yes I do! Randomly bumped into Lyndon, who was in some of my classes at KGS – I’d forgotten that he was going to St Andrews, actually. So I decided to go to Ann’s house – the gathering there was this night, not Sunday night, and take Lyndon with me. Lyndon was soon adopted by Ann, and a generally good night was had by all, at least until Ben (I think?) locked himself in the toilet claiming to be fine, but wasn’t really. Dot dot dot, etc, everything ended up OK, walked back to Albany (it’s a long way!), the end.

Woke up the next morning to subject talks or something, or a welcome from the principal, or something of the sort. It was fine enough, anyway (except what was up with that lion? It seems to be a regular feature, but nobody knows quite why…) This is Tuesday, by the way. Just so I can keep things in track. Can’t really remember what I did during the day, but I passed the time somehow. That night it was the Gatty (Albany) pub quiz, and we didn’t quite win, but it was fun anyway. Our team didn’t do too badly at least! Then met up with someone – Melissa possibly, who was someone I met who’s staying here at Albany, and eventually ended up in the Union, where I finally met Sarah (Smiles) and had a generally very enjoyable night. Also met many random people in the union – Ann, Jazz, and probably others. We all ended up back at Duncan’s, where I appeared to consume rather a lot of liquid of an intoxicating nature, not helped by Duncan (my academic dad, by the way). In the end, Caroline and Lee(?) walked me back home, and that was all good and nice. I had to then get up earlyish – well, maybe about lunchtime, thinking about it – to be advised, and matriculate. I matriculated before most people, so there were no long queues that everyone had warned me of. 🙂 That night was the comedy night I had planned to go to, but instead I ended up going to the debate with Sarah and some of her housemates – “This House Believes An Arts Degree Is A Waste Of Time”. In the end, the popular vote was for the opposition, but it was a good debate and I enjoyed it. I then went to the union, intending to go to the comedy, but it had sold out. Met up with Eleanor there, had a brief chat, before I went off and finally had that early night I’d been planning on having for days… well, earlyish, at least.

Thursday, Thursday. The week seemed to go so quickly! Ah, yes, I remember now. I won’t go into very much detail on this day. Basically, met up with Sarah that afternoon and went over to Fife Park to meet her housemates, and generally had a lot of fun there. There was a barbeque happening over there, so I helped myself to some free food and drink. 🙂 A bit too much of the latter, perhaps. Anyway, had much fun, sent a text message to someone I didn’t mean to, things happened that weren’t meant to happen, blah, blah, etc, etc, don’t ask, ended up at the union again briefly, before making my way – a bit late – to Ann’s magic-themed birthday party. Had more fun there, met more family and other random people, slept, woke up, found my jumper had disappeared (still don’t know what happened to that!), went back to Albany, and… whatever happened next. It all seems so far away, somehow. This week too has gone very quickly, but I’ll get to that in another 20 pages or so time. Friday now, anyway, and Friday night is bop night. Had a generally good night, although something happened at the end that was a bit meh, but let’s not go there again. Back home then, and that was that.

Now, after Friday came Saturday, and with that came the sports fayre, which I briefly attended and ended up putting my name down for fencing and archery. Not actually done anything with these though, yet, not had the time! Will see how things go, and there’s always the future when I’ve not got quite so much on! Met up with Rachel in the afternoon and my academic grandad on her side, and had a nice little chat. Saturday night I went to see Aberfeldy with Eleanor, who were performing in venue 1. It was a good performance too, although the guys that were on before weren’t quite so good in my opinion. Saw Douglas there too, and Rachel again, which was nice. Went back for another quietish night, which was welcoming! Sunday afternoon was the societies fayre, I put my name down for a few too many societies, including WiredSoc, The Sinner, Ents, Rogue Productions, St Andrews Radio and possibly others. More about that later. Sunday night, now that was a good night – ceilidh. Coming from Orkney, we have a lot of ceilidhs, although we just call them “dances” up there, so it was interesting to see how they did them down in St Andrews. It was generally a lot of fun, had a few random dances with random people, and then finally did the good ol’ Orcadian Strip the Willow with Rachel – the Strip the Willow (we don’t call it “Orcadian” in Orkney, funnily enough) has always been my favourite dance, so it was nice to dance it here! Went back home, and that was the end of freshers week! An absolutely insane week it was – I met so many people, forgot so many names, but it really was an absolutely brilliant week, it really was. 🙂

Monday came, and that meant enrolment for modules, and lectures! 10am was Comp Sci, got enrolled for that, and had a basic introductory lecture. That afternoon I had enrolment for Management, which was also fine enough, and Tuesday brought enrolment for Philosophy, as well as introductory lectures for CS1002 and CS1010 (the discrete maths module), and a start to work in Management. Tuesday night was “Boozeday Tuesday”, which basically means cheap drinks at the Vic. A good night was generally had with the sinner lot there, in the union, and at Duncan’s house, so that was good and nice. Getting up for 10am lectures the next day was not quite so fun, but it wasn’t impossible. That’s yesterday now, by the way. I had two lectures yesterday – none in the afternoon – so that was quite nice. That evening I had the first meeting of Ents – the group who set up all the sound, lighting and who generally run events in the union. It looks as though it should be good fun – a few of us will be behind the scenes at the bop on Saturday to see how that runs – setting up, starting everything up, the event itself, and so on. So that was good. Today, I had a couple more lectures, a comp sci practical, and a meeting of the STAR group (St Andrews Radio) – that also looks like it’ll be good fun. Oh, and I bought a bike yesterday, picked it up today, it makes things so much nicer. I had a little cycle around St Andrews tonight, means I won’t have to walk 1.6 miles each way, twice a day, to lectures alone, any more…

Hm, and that’s what’s been happening with me recently, summed up in a neat 2,400-ish words. What a long ramble. Oh well, I hope you enjoyed, please do leave a comment, and feel free to get in touch and let me know how you’re all getting on, those who I haven’t spoken to in a while.

Anything else? Nope? Oh well, I’ll check back in… sometime.

University…

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— orudge @ 18/09/2005 2:58 pm

… is good. Or at least yesterday was. Pretty mad, but good.

More in the coming days.

Magical Trevor 3!

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— orudge @ 15/09/2005 9:47 pm

Magical Trevor 3 is out, and in my opinion, it’s really not all that good compared with Magical Trevor 2, which itself wasn’t very good compared with the original and best… but oh well, thought I’d announce it here, since I announced the other two. 😉

Got my new 256MB PCI Express GeForce 6600GT graphics card today – it plays the AoE 3 demo very nicely. 🙂

Off to uni on Saturday, so I’ll update from then sometime over the next little while. It should be fun!

Updated photo gallery!

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— orudge @ 13/09/2005 5:28 pm

I’ve upgraded the photo gallery software to the brand spanking new Gallery 2.0, which has a very nice new look and is generally much nicer for me to administrate too… be sure to check it out! 🙂

Don’t forget…

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— orudge @ 09/09/2005 11:59 pm

… as reported last year, it is Talk Like A Pirate Day on September 19th, which will be the Monday of freshers week for me… should be interesting! Y’arrr! Shiver me timbers! Maybe I should go to Ann’s party as a pirate…… 😛

TTDAlter 4.3 released!

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— orudge @ 12:00 pm

TTDAlter 4.3 has finally been released! Get it from the TTDAlter page.

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