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Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler
Calling on the stars to fall…
Filed under: — 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!
Filed under: — 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…
Filed under: — 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!
Filed under: — 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. 🙂
Toast in the post!
Filed under: — orudge @ 11/06/2005 7:13 pm
Had to smile at this one… Toast in the Post… it seems to be what it says it is, they send you a piece of toast in the post! I’ve not tried it, but it looks interesting enough. Please note that they don’t supply butter, jam or other condiments. 😉
Somebody save me, I don’t care how you do it
Filed under: — 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!
Filed under: — 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
Filed under: — 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
Filed under: — 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
Filed under: — 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!
Filed under: — 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… 🙁
Wednesday
Filed under: — orudge @ 25/05/2005 6:26 pm
A random Wednesday comes and goes. I didn’t do all that much today… my stuff from Overclockers was despatched, and will hopefully arrive quite soon. Apart from that, well, not a lot.
Upgrade!
Filed under: — orudge @ 24/05/2005 7:15 pm
Well, the time has come for Phase #1 of the Upgrade. Phase #2 will be a graphics card upgrade later in the year in time for Age of Empires III, but Phase #1 involves:
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939)
- Asus A8V Rev.2 Deluxe VIA K8T800 Pro (Socket 939) Motherboard
- OcUK Value (6097) Gaming Case Silver – 400w PSU
- Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6B250SO SATA 16MB Cache – OEM
- Compro VideoMate DVB-T200 Digital TV Internal PCI
All of which should give me quite a nice system, when combined with my 1GB RAM, 17″ TFT, 16x DVD writer (dual-layer) and so on. The graphics card will likely be the main bottleneck then, but that will be sorted later in the year. The disadvantage there is it’ll have to be AGP, rather than PCI Express, which will probably be cheaper then, but for the games I play, I likely won’t notice it that much. (My current graphics card – GeForce 4 MX 440 – is only PCI, due to my old motherboard, some PC Chips abomination – not having an AGP slot!). My laser printer should arrive later in the week too, which is good. Status update later. 🙂
No more exams!
Filed under: — orudge @ 23/05/2005 6:35 pm
Had Higher History today, it went surprising well… I did my two essays on the growth of democracy in Britain from 1867 to 1928, and concerns over the US immigration policy after 1918, and they seemed to go OK, perhaps not quite enough quotation and statistics though. Paper 2, the “question/answer” paper, wasn’t too bad – we do the Appeasement and Road to War topic, and it was mainly on the Anschluss and Czechoslovakia, so not too bad. Now: 4 months of not a lot. Anyone got any computer-related work they want doing? 😉
Uncyclopedia!
Filed under: — orudge @ 22/05/2005 9:56 am
Now, you may have heard of Wikipedia, but have you heard of Uncyclopedia? Uncyclopedia is a very funny site full of very funny articles about the world we live in. A few examples of pages I’ve noticed that made me laugh… Eiffel Tower, Scotland, London, Those magazines where you get free stuff and binder with part one, but get hammered on the subsequent issues….. check it out, you might like it. 😉
Zernebok!
Filed under: — orudge @ 20/05/2005 1:26 pm
Well, after some time, the blog has finally been moved to Zernebok (the Adiungo hosting expires on Monday), and it seems to work just as well as, if not better than, before. The issues with mod_rewrite were probably solved when the server has to be reinstalled, so I’m happy enough now. 🙂
Random day
Filed under: — orudge @ 19/05/2005 9:54 pm
Not a lot happened today… woke up, postman had been – my copy of Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 arrived, as had a letter from St. Andrews telling me that they received my accommodation application and will allocate accommoation after exam results come out in August. I installed Visual Studio, and proceeded to build a 64-bit Windows version of OpenTTD with it. Tested it on Tom’s computer, and it crashed, but it does work, to a point. Work in progress. 😉
Biology!
Filed under: — orudge @ 18/05/2005 7:28 pm
Well, today was The Day™, ie, the day of the Higher Biology exam. And I have to say, it actually seemed really quite easy, compared with the past papers and so on I’ve done. I’m really quite confident that I’ve passed it, and also fairly confident that I’ve got at least a B. An A, I’m not sure, but I’ll settle for a B (or even a C, I don’t mind as long as I get at least that). So that’s me hopefully going to St. Andrews now in September, which is good as I’ve been awarded a scholarship there. 🙂 Back at home now until Sunday night now.
Advanced Higher French
Filed under: — orudge @ 17/05/2005 3:25 pm
Had my AH French exam today, and it actually went really well, in my opinion. The papers were both quite a bit easier than the ones we’ve practiced with, we all thought – the reading paper was on mixed marriages (eg, a French person and a Moroccan) and while I know I made some mistakes, it seemed at least to go fairly well. The listening/writing paper was quite good too – it was about wind turbines (guess what have just been erected on Sanday recently? ;)) and so on, and was quite clear and not too quick, so the listening section I’m fairly confident about. The writing section had a bunch of awful questions, but also a really good one on TV/cinema, which was the one I answered. Hopefully that’ll be fine too. 🙂
Just did a Biology past paper… by my reckoning, I got a B, so hopefully I can repeat or exceed that tomorrow. Just need to do some more learning of things like the numbers of carbons in the Calvin Cycle and some other bits and bobs here and there…. all good fun really. No, honestly, it is. Oh, who am I kidding? 😉
Back to the hostel…
Filed under: — orudge @ 16/05/2005 4:46 pm
… until Wednesday evening. Tomorrow is French, which hopefully won’t be too bad – it depends upon how fast the listening is, how easy the reading is, and what questions come up for the essays, I guess! Will keep you posted. Then it’s the big one on Wednesday: Biology. Some sections are gradually becoming less cloudy, so hopefully that trend will continue as time ticks closer to 1.30pm on Wednesday. History is next Monday, I haven’t really thought much about that yet, as I have four empty days before Monday to study for it.