Wednesday, 2 November 2011

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. 

Thursday, 20 October 2011

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.

Monday, 17 October 2011

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)

Friday, 6 May 2011

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.