Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

American Edit is a mash-up album based on Green Day’s American Idiot and it’s really entertaining :D. There is like every song you can think of thrown in at some point including the Doctor Who theme tune. Allow Dean Gray to explain more.

Yep, can you believe it :p. But don’t get over-excited I got the bare minimum taken off – just the tips which is less than half an inch. It’s just to tidy it up a bit and so it will grown thicker so it looks pretty much the same. First time in about half a year though :D.

As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, I’ve been meaning to write about two subjects, one of which is this, a conclusion of my second term at uni for a while now. Well, I’m finally getting round to it. Before I start, I just want to mention, I’m currently listening to The Used’s self-titled album. It’s really good. It’s fairly hard rock and screamy but then I’m quite into that :D.

Anyway, this second term has been quite a different experience from my first. As well you can expect I guess. The first term you don’t really know what to expect, everything is new and you are trying to find your feet. By the second term you are more settled in.

I think that’s true to an extent. A lot of more experienced people that gave us intro talks and we chatted to in freshers week say the first term is a bit weird and you miss home and can’t wait to get back there but then once you get back at Christmas you realise you actually really like it at uni and don’t get homesick after that. I never really had that. I was homesick in freshers week but since then I haven’t felt that way. I didn’t want to go home at Christmas, I was already settled in.

Though perhaps most people have felt this way and it’s because they have changed over Christmas and come back with a new attitude for the second term that I feel different this term. Not that I am saying I haven’t changed, I think my attitude has changed this term, particularly as it went on. It seems to be that in the first term I hung out with my house a lot just because they were my house, I knew them most and I like them. But it seems this term I am more content to hang out with friends off my course, as I click more with them more. Not that I didn’t do this before but I feel I have become more detached from my house this term as I build my own social circle. That’s probably the wrong term, I love them all but like when everyone is going out to The Courtyard, I probably wouldn’t go now whereas I would of in the first term. It was fun but these days I would rather go to The Cockpit with whoever wants to go over taking part in the mainstream events.

Maybe it’s just the natural progression of becoming better friends with certain people although maybe I just haven’t explored my house enough. I mean, it’s not like it’s devoid of people who do like going to Cockpit and Wendy House but it’s only really at the end of the term that I made the decision to pro-actively try and organise outings between those of us who are looking for non-mainstream events within Grant.

Maybe I just threw myself into socialising in the first term and now I’ve found my friends niche it’s less important to me. For the first term I would always have my door open, recently I’ve found I haven’t. I don’t really know why that is, but I’ve noticed it none the less.

I’d hate to think I was drifting away from my house. But then I don’t think I’ve formed as tighter friendship groups as most people in Grant have. I don’t want to blame this all on Jack but my Valentine’s Day rejection did a lot of emotional damage to me ;). We could have had something great Jack!

Still, I don’t think I’m bad off. It’s not like I don’t hang out with my house, we hang out a lot. While I don’t have an intimate knowledge of the goings-on in other houses and residences, it seems that Grant is definitely one of the more social houses. A lot of places seem to have very divided groups. Of course Grant has strong social circles too but pretty much anybody would hang out with anyone else from Grant which is why I love it.

Hmm, I’ll probably come back and re-write some of this later (actually I just did, this has been sitting on my desktop for a few hours) once I’ve meditated a little more on the subject. It’s been a great term. Plan for next term: get as much partying in as possible due to the limited time span. Also I think we need a Grant House MarioKart tournament. Or is it only me and Rob still playing that? :p.

Do I have a blogging addiction? I don’t believe most of the media hype over “internet addiction” but then I’ve been up for like an hour (slightly less at the time of writing) and this will be my second blog post. And I’m hopfully going to do those two posts I mentioned earlier as well as anything else that happens today. That’s a lot of posts.

Still I came across a post on Footsteps in the Mirror which has a list of signs and I fit into only a few of the criteria (3 sort of, 12, 13, 14 to a degree, 16, 21 to a lesser degree, 23, 24 and 30). So out of 30 signs, that’s not too bad. I think.

The most worrying would probably be 3…

The existing blogosphere niche knows more about your own life than the entire real world friends and family combined.

Although I say sort of as I’m not sure anyone reads my blog enough to have developed this kind of knowledge. But the point is, if someone did read every post I made, they would probably have more of an insight into my lives than my parents do. Don’t get me wrong, it would be a close match. But on topics such as how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking and indeed what I’ve done at uni, the blog readers would come out on top.

I also feel like recently my posts have become more in depth. I used to make loads of one paragraph posts and these still account for much of my blog but there are plenty of examples in recent times of posts of similar length to this one. Maybe it’s just me and they were always like that. Back when I was blogging on Nerd Federation (up till about July 2005 before I transferred to this blog) almost all my posts were a uniform 4 paragraphs long.

The other sign that could suggest an addiction is the fact I am still going. I started rapidly blogging in January. Before that I would often blog but not several times per day, every day. I figured it was like a revivial of when I first got my blog back on Nerd Fed and it was new and exciting so I often would blog 2 or 3 times per day. Still, here we are 3 months later and I’m still blogging as frequently and if anything it should have died down faster because there was no real catalyst for me to start blogging so frequently in January, at least that I know of.

I went over to Dictionary.com to get an official definition and found…

1.
1. Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance: a drug used in the treatment of heroin addiction.
2. An instance of this: a person with multiple chemical addictions.
2.
1. The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.
2. An instance of this: had an addiction for fast cars.

I guess I’m kind of falling in the middle really. I don’t think I have a physiological compulsion to blog although I really do like to get things of my chest. Is this really any different to people keeping diaries though? It just happens to be public. I’ve always looked at my blogging the same way I look at my music. I’m going to write what I think sounds good and what I want to listen to and if other people like it also, well that’s an added bonus.

I slept in until 10:45 again. I really didn’t mean to. I looked at my watch at like just gone 8 and decided, yeah, I can legitimately get more sleep here, I was reading until what I estimate was 12:30 so my 8 hours gives me another half an hour at least. Then I just kind of fell asleep again until 10:45.

Still, what the hell, it’s not like I’m going to be doing anything productive with my day anyway. I’m probably going to spend most of it worrying about hard drive crashes. I’m getting paranoid. I’m overprotective of my data but then I don’t have backups – how am I supposed to backup 200 gb of data? I can’t really afford a spare hard drive and doing it with DVDs would cost me £25 by itself and take a day or two non-stop to do it.

Ok, today’s life plan. Need to put money in the bank, sort my medical form thing out, clear more space on my external hard drive to run backups, sort my emails out and do some general monitoring and website updating. Oh, maybe install Trillian on my desktop too, I’m thinking of moving it over because I’m hoping it will load faster and my desktop is on pretty much 24/7 whereas my laptop isn’t so I’m not on as much.

Kaitlin just said this on The O.C. (which I could do to catch up on now I’m home). They were talking about whether the place changes or you. Which got me in somewhat of a philosophical mood.

I wanted to see what other people thought so I did what any one of us would do – I Googled it. The first result I came up with was an article by E. LeMay Lathan. I also ran the search through blog search and came across posts by Al Martine and a girl named Paige.

I think I believe it’s you that changes, as home was different when I came home. Or was it. That said, I had only been gone for a few months and I had been home several times in that time for a night or whatever. But when I moved back at Christmas things had changed. It was the little things. Like the fact they had re-arranged the days in which people get to pick what is on TV.

Then again, maybe it hasn’t changed. I seem to have gone back, right into my old lifestyle and every is carrying on as if I had never left. I mean, I’m going to go out with my friends over the holidays (not that I didn’t hang out with my friends before but like on nights out this time) but other than that, what is different? I still spent most of my time sat on my computer in my room, watching TV and very little else.

But the real inspiration for the post was not what I was doing at home, but rather that I didn’t want to be home. Before I left I was quite happy to be at home. Now I’m not. I want to be back at uni, there I’m free to live a completely reckless lifestyle :D. There’s a downside to it but it’s well worth it.

And I think that the saying could well mean that you can never regain the feeling. That is I think is fairly safe to say is true. But I’m hoping that turns out to be a good thing. It worries me that when I’m say 30 or 40, I will still wish I was a student as I love being a student. It scares me how fast time is passing though I have to believe that when I reach that age I will feel I am ready for the next stage in my life.

Has anyone else noticed an increase in PSAs (public service ads)?

I first noticed it at the cinema when I went to see V for Vendetta, there were quite a few on as trailers before the movie started.

Then today while we were listing to Radio Aire there were some more and I’ve just watched one about safe driving on Channel 5. Of course I haven’t been big on my media since Christmas so it may have been a slow change or a quick change while I was away. But whatever it is, there seems to be a lot more recently.

Well I’m not totally depressed again. I only left two days ago and I’m already missing uni like crazy. Maybe it will pass, when I came home at Christmas I started off wanting to be at uni and then by the end of the holiday I had got settled in at home and wasn’t really bothered about leaving, just about the time I had to. You just can’t win.

I’ve gone back to watching Dawson’s Creek, it’s like my comfort food (based on the idea I need my radiation fix which is why I can’t go 24 hours without a computer with internet access). I’m on disk 5 though. To be honest, I don’t know where I am. I think I started again at the right episode which I’m watching now, I don’t remember watching this one but I remeber the previous one from the quick description in the DVD case booklet thing.

I only have 7 episodes left including this one though so it’s unlikely to last me through the holidays. And indeed, what do I do without it? DC kept me sane through the final depression stretch of my teenage years and it got to the point that DC meant more to me than anything. I can’t find the right term to describe what I’m feeling but I don’t know what I’m going to do without more new episodes to look forward to. I mean, after this, it’s over. I’ve seen them all. Dawson is my hope, my guiding star that showed me life can turn out right after all. Where do I go from here? And why do I insist in wallowing in a pit of blogging and self pity?

Let’s look on the bright side. I think I was wrong about the clash between Star and the return of Friday Flock so my next few weekends (excluding the one coming up) should be Star, Friday Flock, Wendy House providing I can get some company. Well, not even that for Wendy House, I’m going to blow my entire holiday waiting for it so I will turn up alone if necessary.

Ok, enough about my life, I’ve moaned on for long enough. Tomorrow, I’m going to phone Craig and see if he is up for filming some more Nightmare 90210. Stay tuned.

Just a quick heads up for fans of Nightmare 90210. Episode 4 has now finished post production and will be moving on to distribution very soon. Expect it some time this week. I’m also drawing up plans to get episode filmed, plus an interview with Jimmy Spandex and get the scripts sorted for episodes 5 and 6.

Some of the headlines in The Onion recently have been brilliant :D…

• Study: High Times Not A Gateway Magazine To Harder Reading
• Rumsfeld: Iraqis Now Capable Of Conducting War Without U.S. Assistance
• Poverty-Stricken Africans Receive Desperately Needed Bibles
• Study: Dolphins Not So Intelligent On Land