Bad Luck

This happened about a month ago:
I managed to srew up and totally miss my, train, which was apparently the last one today, balls. It wasn't entirely my fault, I was on a Boris bike and there were no free slots at the first station, that cost me 10 minutes; and then I couldn't find the platform.
Anyway, I was feeling totally like Lisbeth Salander, sitting on a train platform late at night with a stupidly high-value amount of gadgets. (£500 iphone, £500 camera, £200 netbook, £80 wi-fi dongle) Now, put yourself in my shoes.

You needed to check the subsequent trains so pulled out your phone. 

Bad luck, your battery is about to die. Shit, pull out laptop to charge it or make a note of the numbers to call to say you'll be home late. 

Your laptop take 20 MINUTES to boot cos it's windows and it's gotta install some shit. Lukily your phone doesn't die and you got time to spare. Grab usb cable and plug phone in. 

You forgot, your usb cable is trashed and doesn't conect to your computer, it won't even charge it, and the replacement you ordered a week ago hasn't arrived yet. So no charging, or tethering, for you. Not to worry, make a note of the numbers, then use your wi-fi dongle and use skype. 

Bad luck, dongle's got no credit. No problem! You've got a credit card. 

Bad luck, 3's top-up page needs to connect to an external security site to authenticate you, and you've got no data remember. Ok ok, there's a payphone over there, you've got the necessary 60p change.

Unfortunately they only take four coins, and you have four 5ps and two twentys. GOOD NEWS you find a 20p in your pocket. 

However when you get through it's a shit line and you're calling a mobile, so you get about 30 seconds and don't manage to communicate the problem. Shit cakes. No problem! You're on a train station, there's pigeons everywhere, catch one and send a message! Bad luck..... etc ad infinitum

Now, obviously I didn't plan my equipment with several layers of redundancy, and normally my phone is my only communication method, but I was amused that everything I thought would allow me to contact the necessary persons managed to fail all at the same time. 

How my parents lied to me

@lisaansell my parents lied to me (in that manner) twice when I was little. Once when I was growing carrots, my mum bought some from the shop and buried them for me to harvest. Once when they took our cat back to a shelter bcos he kept running away for weeks and returning with fleas, they said he must have ran away for good. I think the first was lovely and sweet, the second I'm not sure about but obviously they didn't want me to be upset with them for taking him back.

Musical thoughts

I've been paying for spotify for a while now, which is awesome now I've sorted out syncing tracks to my phone so I can listen to something when I don't have a data connection, and awesome because it scrobbles to last.fm.


My music tastes are eclectic, like most peoples, but last.fm told me mine are mostly like a 23yo girls, so, ..


transition, The Pussy Cat Dolls, I read about their break up, and saw a quote from one of them suggesting that it was always Nicole and he girls, never a cohesive group. Given that they've now split up, it's apparent that musically Nicole Scherzinger is orders of magnitude more successful than any of the others, so perhaps that was justified. I am a fan of Her Majesty & The Wolves though, which is one of Kimberley Wyatt's projects.


And Lily Allen who wrote a song in which she wishes she could look like Cheryl Tweedy, has more than TWICE the number of plays than Girls Aloud, Cheryl Cole or my favourite Nicola Roberts(try this for delicious bitchiness and fun) COMBINED. And Ms Allen apparently has said she doesn't see how she can make a profit making music. If that's right, something is definitely broken.


Unrelatedly, despite having spotify premium, I'll probably buy Pixie Lott's new album Young Foolish Happy when it comes out on the 7th of November, because I keep playing All About Tonight and What Do You Take Me For? on repeat. (those videos are seriously hot too)


So you can convince me to buy your music as long as it's good enough and I can get to it easily, Sky Ferreira(Amazon, can't get the album in the Uk) and Natalia Kills (couldn't get the album in the Uk)

I love this, and hate it at the same time. Or maybe I just hate me now.

So having spent my the previous 15hours thinking about prosthetics, biomechanics and biomimcry. I'm going to go to sleep listening to a podcast on which a dr of neurobiology and one of the worlds foremost physicist talk about Eastenders. For values of Eastenders that equal the future of physics.
Seriously, what's it like being a non-STEM student?
I still didn't finish my essay, I wanted sleep too much and figured it's so late it might as well be well presented and later, rather than rushed and just late. Even I think the content is shit though. And the weekend means it'll be three whole days late, probably eliminating any actual mark value. I've just got to proofread it, maybe contract slightly, add pictures and sort out the references. I say just, sorting out the references will probably take 3 hours-ish.
And that will probably all have to happen on Sunday. Because today I have a lecture at 1, then an electronics lab for two hours. Then work for five hours, finish at 9:30, back in at 7 to work 7.5 more hours. Then I'll probably need a nap.
Oh well, on the positive side that is why my bank balance is £6000 and I've earnt £1300 during term time alone so far. If I didn't have a job I would literally have enough time to do a second degree.
Anyways, now to stop wasting valuable sleeping time.

I hate essays

I swear I could've (and if I'd started it early enough would've) researched this essay for weeks and still not have established quite what goes down in this field, curse you limited wider public interest industries with your proprietary technologies and oligopoly markets.
Also, I am tired.
And have a group presentation to write after I finish this. So should've done that first.
And fuck you greenpeace, who sends emails at this time if night, seriously I am on a unsubscribe binge at the moment, don't fucking tempt me.
And to the people in front of me, stop being so gaddamn loud. I appreciate you're shittly organised and are finishing a group project but I am not and I hate you for that.
Ok now you're just tickling the hot engineering girl (yes there is almost only one of them, in a class of 340, I kind wish I was gay-er) you'd get crap loads more done if you all fucked off home and left me in peace. Then you'd be sAfe from my wrath too.

Scuse the spelling errors.
Actually scratch the last, it's 0125, fuck off.

It(was) FRIDAY

Typically, any normal Friday - which would probably mean that Rebecca Black doesn't want to leave the house anymore. Except that this time some people were getting married, and due to a quirk of history one of them is heir to a hereditary position. A hereditary position that is now largely ceremonial and doesn't require any test of competence or wield any power, but that is still the <i>de jure</i> head of a country that once - possibly because of the historical holders of that position - held a significant amount of sway over 75% of the world and was pivotal in the industrial revolution.
Now understandably this means people are interested, although there is probably some fascinating psychology behind why people want to watch someone's wedding, and people being interested obviously means others might want to take advantage of the event to communicate a point.
So basically, there is a risk of terrorist attacks at weddings of heirs to the British throne.
Hence the police presence and whatever else nervous close protection officers there were that no body new about.
But we live in a democratic society, where people should have a right to protest peacefully, and be free from harassment.
So it's great to hear that the Met were raiding squats, kettling people going to alternative street parties, and generally acting like over-zealous, grudge holding, baton wielding pricks.
Preemtipve arrests, preemptive arrests. Repeat that until it makes sense. Apparently we don't need either the additional powers of dubious terrorism act or minority report to be arrested anymore, the police just need to think we might make a fuss.
That's shit.

New Years Resolutions

Well, in the spirit of... actually I have no idea (perpetual traditions?), I have made many new years resolutions. Which I will have forgotten by February if I don't write them down. So here we are:

1) Blog more
This is only here because it's on my failed, neglected, pathetic excuse for a 'public diary/external thought aggregator' I consider that this is encompassed by other resolutions. But since this is at the top of the list. I will see it and FEEL BAD. Yes, I am talking to YOU future self, arsehole.

2)Prioritise my time, stop procrastinating, train my fleeting short-term hedonism.
If I put much effort into stuff, I could be fucking awesome. But I don't. I spend hours being distracted by relatively irrelevant things, on youtube, twitter, 2leep, any on demand media service or name-your-poison-here. In my first term at uni I would leave work set TWO WEEKS before the due date until 6 hours before the deadline, (which yes means more than once I began working at 4am) having spent the previous day just lurking on the interwebz. I have had four weeks off over christmas, during which I had 3 maths questionaires set, a research project, and a 1000 word essay. I have started none of them. I return to uni in 3 days. Shit.
At this point I am genuinely worried I will fail my degree, before I have really even started it.
Admittedly it doesn't help that I constantly question my decisions about going to uni and this degree, but more on that later.

3) Tell more people how much I appreciate them, stop loosing those people.
Well the initial part is a little difficult to accomplish without sounding weird or overly emotional. But worth a shot. I have found it difficult to make any particularly strong bonds with people recently, so more effort is required there. So I shall roll all that into one 'Be more friendly' header. On the latter, there are several people who I was really close to who I have lost contact with, and I hate it. So by the end of the year I either want to have restored my relationship or written it off. If that is (unfortunately) the case there shall be a big note attached to the memory saying “Don't do this again because it's fucking painful and you probably wouldn't survive a repetition in any identifiable manner”

4) Dance more.
Pretty simple. Obviously it contains numerous implications. I do however harbour a secret desire to actually be able to dance, so I should go to a class.

5)  Re-learn to read sheet music and to play the guitar.
Technically I am a grade 4 guitarist. Unfortunately I have forgotten almost everything. I keep meaning to re-learn, but, well... (see #2)

6) Support my parents more.
Various complicated and painful reasons for this one. Basically, they need help, and I should help them more, otherwise one or both of them are going to have a breakdown or make themselves very very ill. And, supporting my theory that I am a heartless selfish wanker, this would mean that in the long run I'd have to do more. It is intriguing how one's relationship with parents change when one moves out/away.

7) Create more.
I've been meaning to do this for yonks. (See 2 again, 2 is definitely the main problem here) Currently I consume a hella-lot of media, in terms of video, music, images and writing. I do not contribute to the collective pool in any way. This was suggested by someone during a discussion about creative commons, the suggestion was if one consumes free (as in gratis) media the payment for this should be contributing your own. Other than this I want to make some videos and film some things, as I have some ideas that I think would be cool to watch. Obviously at uni it is incredibly easy to start doing this, and I already have a little. Some large part of my loan may go on a DSLR, however that would be ridiculously indulgent.

8) Get fit
An old clichéd one. However, I am a fitness instructor, and get paid to instruct people who at the moment are often fitter than me. This is embarassing. I really love my job, and don't want to loose it. I'd also like to take it further and become a personal trainer, for which I definitely need to be much much fitter. Also, as I want to join the military immediately after uni, I need to seriously pick my game up for that. The regime and discipline will also help with #2.

9) Stop thinking about how awesome I could be, and all the awesome things I could do. And do it.
Do it, all, at once.
Just see #2, again.

Game on, 2011.

P.S. Also, I suppose get laid would be nice.