The router did something odd just now, in the time taken to fix it, I lost the nice IP 82.43.81.42…
I’m now stuck with the less memorable 77.103.210.112
I’ve had that IP address for many years now, a shame to see it disappear into the ether…
Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
End of an Era
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008Rest in Peace
Friday, May 16th, 2008
Joan Ethel Wood
Thursday, 11th Janurary 1917 - Friday, 16th May 2008
She peacefully died this morning at her care home whist sitting drinking a cup of tea.
A Long Day
Friday, May 16th, 2008This post was going to be a rant about the rest of my year group.
This post was going to be about how people change.
This post will just be in memory.
Have a day
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
or two to be with family.
This year is the first I can remember when Grandma has not been at the table. Depressing. You wonder if she really knows who you are at times.
Christmasses are now getting quite samey, the presents get less exciting and more like socks. (I really got a pack of socks this year!)
But, some surprises do exist, I particularly liked the DVD I received this year.
Speechless
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007Every time I want to write something serious on here, either ranting publicly or privately, I’m usually either walking or riding home, when I actually get home, I can no longer put my private soliloquies to words and write down my thoughts. It’s so annoying.
I suppose I should recap recent events, our team came 3rd in Nitex 
of 7 teams competing, 3 finished. It was a nice evening for a walk, dry, but a bit breezy on the hills. We arrived back at 6am, the birdsong had just started as we were on the home straight. The last section of the walk was the worst of the lot, most of the paths were deeply eroded and filled with water from the morning’s rain. It was literally like walking down rivers, not the nicest finish to the hike.
I’m also finally going to be hopefully doing my Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award, I went to a (county) meeting regarding it this weekend.
I’m going to have issues with fulfilling my Service and Phys Rec sections, Phys Rec will be fairly easy - Orienteering is allowed, I just need to research it some more and send some intro emails to the local clubs. Service will be the sticking point. I did help with the group’s Beaver section until around the start of this year (poor memory here), my poor self-reasoning was that I wasn’t being treated as a young-leader. I felt nervous all the time around the beavers, especially when all the warranted leaders were out of the hall.In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been worried, Maureen is a very talented leader (even if Salem is a little disorganised). In hindsight, I regret my decision to leave without informing them much (can’t remember for certain), I think it would be difficult to rejoin the helper team, especially now because (little) Charlie has filled my role there. It might just be jealousy, but I don’t mind, she’s much better with children.
Enough ranting and putting myself down, I need to find something positive to think about myself. But that gets so much harder when I look.
I should stop self-contradicting, I do have things to be positive about - nitex went well, we didn’t get (too) lost, and I was wanted for Red Flare (although only 1 team will be put into it). I’m not wanted often. I should also be happy that I have good friends, after all, Ben invited me onto the GDoE expeditions.
Hell, this post has probably gone far too deep into my thoughts to be public, but I cba to split and privatise it.
All Night Long
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007…or maybe I won’t post an update the next day.
Anyway, this is my post for December, to claim I have blogged almost every month since Dec 04! (Although, much of it really isn’t worth reading)
What have I been up to? Researching what’s needed for a Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s award, looking at orienteering club websites, and also worrying about the impending Nitex competition - a 14 mile night (7pm-3amish) hike from a town just inside Kent to Croydon.
I even bothered to check possible routes for annoying parts:
I’ve also been messing about with some GIMP rendering tools, this is my new desktop background:
There’s also a rather nice abstract Π image that I made for Alex’s birthday card, he’s not mentioned the error in it yet…
As always I have a todo list to complete, and tons of mock exams in preparation for the January AS modules. Phy1 went fairly well, as did the Maths(ish) - it helps if you complete all the questions that are set.
I often say that the world is oddly ‘loopy’ - people know other people in unexpected ways, all that six degrees of freedom stuff. (My facebook friend wheel sorta demonstrates that). Anyway, back in Jan 06, I pondered what it would be like to work at BBC R&D, skip forward to Feb 06, and I spot a work experience placement there, skip further forward to Jun 06, and I’m on a week’s placement at BBC R&D, working under Steve Jolly. Skip further forward to last week, a physics lesson with Mr Bain, in the usual off-topic sciencey chat, the topic of holograms came up, he noted the BBC was working on them, and I mentioned I worked there with Steve. It turns out that Mr Bain and Mr Jolly went to university together, (I won’t link to the photographic proof, but he may regret it being on the net since Stephen Mann linked me to it originally).
The STUFF club being planned sounds fun - it needs a good set of words to fit the acronym.
Oh and premonitions - another favourite topic of mine, I forgot to note that it happened again. The corner of Butter Hill and Leechcroft Road has recently had a new bollard installed to stop cars driving onto the pavement of the narrow road. I walked past on my way home and thought to myself, “oh, that’s new, i wonder how long that will stay in perfect condition?”. I continued walking up Leechcroft Rd, as I got close to the junction with Burleigh Road, I saw a large road surfacing lorry coming towards me, it passed and continued to turn into Butter Hill. It hit the pillar as it was turning the tight corner, and almost got stuck. In the end, only the fresh paint on the pillar was removed. (Oh, and it proves ineffective - cars mount the pavement immediately after it, now, I’ll try and get photos soon!)
Any more ramblings? I don’t think so…
Preminitions
Saturday, November 10th, 2007Chatting to mum today, it seem’s there’s a history of seeing premonitions in the family. Apparently my great grandmother and herself both have had them.
Why is this important? The odd thing is that I also seem to get them weakly.
I cannot pinpoint all the examples, even though I’m sure I’ve had them at times (although that may just be slight cases of deja vu)
But, at other times, I’ve been spookily close.
Over summer camp, on the Tuesday, I got really upset and started thinking about my grandma - I managed to convince myself that something wasn’t right. I brushed it off fairly quickly - she has been in fairly good health. On return from the camp - I discovered that on that same Tuesday, my granddad had been diagnosed and admitted to hospital with kidney problems - and possible cancer. I knew something was wrong - or I could just be making a link out of a big coincidence.
And today, after the Surrey Assn bellringing training day, mum and myself decided to have a meal out in the Harvester on Sutton Common Road. After waiting the half-hour or so for a table to become free, we finally made our way to the table, as I was walking through, my mind jumped to the explorer group - without prior knowledge, I was looking for and ‘expecting’ to see one of them in the restaurant. The thought quickly left my mind as we ordered. On the way to the salad cart - I happened to glance to the right at a table, and rather unexpectedly saw 4 members of the explorer group (although not the one I had though about several minutes earlier). This it occured to me was odd, thinking about them, and then them appearing. It could probably be explained by spotting or hearing them in my subconcious upon entering the restaurant, and that triggering the thought of that person. Still it’s a very odd premonition.
Oh, the meal was rather rubbish, our waitress wasn’t very organised, and the food arrived after the table next to us (which ordered about 15mins later), and was just warm 
These all have possible rational explinations - coincidence, or the subconcious noticing something. I wonder if I can spot any more premonitions that may float into my head…
Everything has a double meaning
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007I’ve been wittering on recently about my MSN screen-name trilogy, the third in the series that was featured for a short time was that Everything has a double meaning, which means, quite literally, that the previous two of my screen-names have a double meaning - it may not be immediately obvious, or even at all, but there’s a meaning.
Much of what I write is structured to be over-generalised, I sometimes am completely random and abstract - usually those are the ones that I’m trying to confuse people, see if they can work out the sub-text.
Often what is left in the public posts of the blog is sanitised, for every public post I’ve written recently, there could be one or two private ones - to fill in more details that only I wish to remember, fill in more details about my state of mind - to depress me in the future maybe. I have such a poor memory for emotions and events, it’s useful sometimes.
Sometimes these private posts may contain my complete thought trail - usually which I have formulated when travelling on my own from place-to-place, its when I think the most. I will likely generalise the content of the thought and place it in some sort of weekly digest, but yeah - what you see is very little.
My challenge to the few readers of this blog is to find the sub-text, pull me up on it over MSN or via comments here - get inside my head some more.
Why am I doing this? No idea.
Odd…
Friday, September 21st, 2007…how things happen at the last minute.
…how they’re always prevented by something else.
…I always mess up.
…how it will resolve eventually.
…how much I regret my indecisiveness.
…how much I want to change yet can’t.
Status
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007The sine wave has entered the negative state, continuing down.
Routine and Repetition
Sunday, September 9th, 2007I’ve been thinking about routine and repetition recently, with my new subject choices at school, every day is very much the same. The same set of 4 subjects every. single. day.
I find that routine is useful, but it can be overbearing and limiting. As I noted, school every weekday gets boring, especially with the very little variety in lessons. My evenings are usually filled with homework, Tuesdays and Thursdays are a bit of a change, the Tuesday Explorer meeting being fun, often quite random - which is great. The Thursday bellringing sessions can be both pleasurable and annoying - the average age of the group is probably near 60, which is the bad part. Yet, it can be fun, but the same things are done there every week - routine.
Saturdays are really the only free time I have, although they are sometimes filled with yet more work.
I keep a routine on a Sunday, usually wake up quite late, do little with the morning, lunch, do work or little with the afternoon, cycle to Beddington Park, sit in my favourite spot and contemplate the week’s events and happenings. I try to both tie up the week in my head and also blank my mind, it is peaceful at times, a good way to finish the week. A quick cycle to the church usually follows soon after to ring for the evening service, then its straight back home to waste more time. In the evening I will have a bath, to again, think about what is to come this week think some more about the week just passed, and to properly wash my hair.
I waste too much of my time, too. I’m sure I could use my time more productively, or even more enjoyably. I’m a good time waster it’s easy, I’ve tried to stop, it’s difficult and annoying.
I guess trying to break the boredom and repetition may result in some random things, take some of my facebook statuses, for example:
- Thomas is 3.14159.
- Thomas is not green.
- Thomas is failing at attempting to be funny.
- Thomas is not prentending to be an elephant.
- Thomas is probably sane.
- Thomas is everywhere.
- Thomas is not a duck, yet.
- Thomas is a question mark.
- Thomas is a bit odd today, everything 1hr behind, and for some reason has his T-shirt on inside-out.
- Thomas is being indecisive, and eating cheese.
- Thomas is was.
- Thomas is ].
And, I guess Phil currently has the best definition of routine:
Philip Young is back into the swing of things - doing an essay last thing on a sunday night.
I will break my usual routine tomorrow, going into London for a geocaching event.
It still doesn’t help this reputation, though:
Coincidental
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007As my intended plans for Monday had been changed at last minute, I decided to finish the mapping of the Carshalton park area, and also take a look around the environmental fair. I took some photos of it, and uploaded them (and also the random photos of Sutton that were on there) to flickr. My camera isn’t very good - as I found after the corrupted summer camp photos. It writes a bad header to the files, and all the photos are really dark, its just a sucky camera.
Anyway, the two bands I listened to at the fair were ok, a bit meh, all much of the same. I felt a bit odd though, I didn’t really fit at all, sitting there on my own, and feeling unfashionable. Looked around the fair a little, not much interesting happening, although I am intrigued a little by Sutton’s push for use of public transport - there’s posters up in Sutton, and the display at the fair was quite interesting. See flickr photos tagged with smarter travel Sutton.
Walking up the hill from where I was sitting, I coincidentally met Sarah Langley (as noted in my primary school blog on Sunday) , had a short chat about general stuff, mostly exam results.
Even more coincidentally, mum apparently bumped into Mrs Langley today, noted we’d met, and unbelievably to me (either her or sarah, not sure which) described me as ‘cool’, not sure what of me is cool, but meh. Just a little surprised at that description.
I wonder where everyone is, my MSN contact list is looking a little empty for this time of the evening…
Crowded
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007Woke up, checked mail, time got stuff together.
Glad I left for the bus before the call arrived - Ben forgot to phone. I got the right bus, and went to the top deck to join himself, Chris and David. Conversation dodged about, and oddly hit OS Software.
Off at Morden, walked via Kendor Gardens to James’, where everyone else happened to be. 14 is too many people, I felt incredibly awkward in such a large group, a phobia, maybe?
Met Phil in the cinema, bought tickets. Film was ok, interesting how they dodged around with time to slot it into the end of 2 nicely.
Then to Nando’s, got a chicken platter with Ben and Adam, had an Extra Hot Peri-Peri sauce eating competition. Reasonable price.
Walked back to James’, again, felt awkward - too many people, small room, too much noise. Me and Phil left for the station, conversation started awkwardly, didn’t discuss all I wanted to.
Phil managed to rescue conversation to something much easier, a sort of pointless conversation that’s forgotten so easily. Talking to someone like myself is difficult.
Got home, looked at the net, watched Heroes, usual stuff. Had that chat with Andrew instead.
Terse blog entry, saving time.
Stuff
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007Finally got around to looking at styling phpBB3 today, the new theme is very nice, but two different style sheets sure do clash! The forum style is in about a half-completed state, it fits in with the site, but there are still blue patches and glitches around places. FF compat currently far better than IE!
The first two Bourne films are very good, been watching them on ITV2 in preparation to see the film on Wednesday - at least it’ll take my mind off the impending doom of exam results :P, plus a good reason to meet up with some school friends (Ben, James, Alex, a few others too)
Tomorrow (or today as it now is), I’ll cycle over to Andrew’s and return his DVD drive, not seen him for a while, not had a proper talk with him for much longer.
My mood at the moment is happy - happy that I’m being productive, and happy that I’m making a new friend.
Night all.
(Yes, this post was to test tagging of notes)
(Yes, my facebook account has been disabled, pending age-verification - I wasn’t born in 1911)
Disconnected
Saturday, August 18th, 2007Over the past few weeks/months, I have become increasingly disconnected from an important group of friends that I have come to like.
I was wrong not to attend the District camp this year - it only worsened the issue.
Friends are important, without them you feel terrible. I hope that I have now strengthened these friendships to continue throughout this year.
In other news, the server has been down for several days, disconnected from the network by a faulty switch.
Still a massive todo list, increased in length again.
What now follows will probably annoy some people and lose me friends, but I need to get it off my chest. Don’t read if you don’t want to.
(more…)
Machine Downloads
Monday, April 25th, 2005As I may have guessed, MD has flopped. The site was taken down after the host disallowed file portals.
But, Matthew with his limitless amount of ideas has come up with another. Reselling webspace. Again, it may flop. Again, I will code scripts for it and again, I will have FTP access and maybe also CPanel. Apart from his technical expert for scripts, I may be referred to by him for technical support from his customers. As long as he’s got a better server this time, my script will work.
I’m going to be bloody busy in the future.
His decision to start up webspace reselling has got me started on thinking with what I should do with the 4-5 unused PCs in the corner of my room. It starts me thinking of my beloved server farm. Now, just to learn Linux shell commands and server administration!
Damn I HATE art homework.
A Start and an end to a lack of posts
Monday, April 25th, 2005Next week my KS3 SATs come up. A whole week of exams. It’ll be the first of many in the future.
So as I’m so busy revising, I’ll be offline a lot over the next two weeks.
Anyway, my life.
Yesterday, as part of our scout disctrict’s annual calendar, was the St. George’s Day parade. It’s fun to hold up alot of traffic by walking along the road with a police escort.
Otherwise it was boring.
Saturday, I went to James’ Birthday Party with Alex Clarke, Philip, Bruce and others. Started with bowling. The systems at David Lloyd, Raynes Park are absolutely crap. Ours broke down about three times and was just generally old. The standard of bowling was generally good with a few turkeys (3 strikes in a row) and some others. It was also terrbly bad at points. Bruce managed to get the ball lodged in the gulley of the next lane, and also to knock down the guard rail. His bowling style at times was bordering on dangerous.
After, we went into Wimbledon for a meal at an Italian restaurant. Everyone had mostly Pizzas but I had a tomato pasta thing.
Took the tram to my Gran’s where I installed a DVD player for her.
I reccomend you get dvorak it looks kinda cool. Plus it’s easy to switch back to QWERTY if you need to.
What else? Umm, exams, oh and my brother almost killed me today.
OK, until May the whenever it is, cya!
I want to be a duck
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005I want to be a duck. They just sit there on a pond all day eating weed. Yep, ducks are cool.
Anyway, with the KS3 SATS just under 2 weeks away, it seems KS3 subject teachers (Maths, English, Sciences) have gone crazy with mock papers. Maths set before easter, (3 papers), Biology last Wednesday, Chemistry yesterday and Physics this morning. With Maths papers being set for homework and another mock on Thursday. AND then there’s the English (my worst subject) revision class last Sat, before that two reading papers and a writing and a Shakespeare tomorrow. AND, other teachers are giving more homework than usual, GIVE US A BREAK. At least I can come home and relax with my classical music and my C(++) programming (see below). I might go mad if it wasn’t for my extra-curricular activities (again, more below)
After school today, I came home on time (as usual for Tuesdays) and went off to my leadership role in my local Scout group’s Beaver colony. I’ve been doing this for about a year now and it’s a break from continual other stuff. At the moment, they’re doing the Stage 1 IT Badge. (I’ve got stage 4) I have helped set up their old Win98 machine to accommodate their needs.
Now, RANT2 and its meaning. Rant2 is my reaction after my bicycle was stolen last Tuesday. To get to Beavers this week, I rode Mum’s old Hercules bicycle. Although blue, rusty and 70’s style, it is extremely fun to ride. Although it only has one gear, it goes very fast. The steering is fun as the bike has low stability, tip it a bit and it will continue falling, the steering is very sensitive due to the small wheels. Bad points are that your bones rattle whilst riding it and the brakes are frighteningly bad.
I’ve been learning C++ recently and I can now present my first series of programs: Hello World (the classic), Continual Annoying Beepy thing, and Siren. Siren looks to be most promising as Ian (kipper) has mentioned he will use it for his Simpsons batch script. (I have now worked in a length for the siren to go off for in seconds). Binary and source provided on request.
So, I think that just about wraps up my randomness for the past 2days - week.
Remember, ducks ARE COOL!
Todays duck count: 1 (2 including me )
I feel bad
Monday, February 7th, 2005I feel really bad, I got some sort of virus. Bad throat, hot, cold, no smell, taste or hearing. No appetite. No school. Coughing all the time. Urgh.
C U Soon
Friday, February 4th, 2005I’m going to Henman Base for the weekend, with the scouts, as mentioned earlier so I won’t be accessible by any method.
Henman basecamp is owned by the national trust. Henman base is a residence run by the national trust for volunteers to stay whilst assisting the national trust with work on the local area. The work includes clearing trees to conserve areas and also footpath clearing. Its a good break from school and modern life.
Today, 13 of the year 9 GnT group attended a debating course for the whole of Sutton. It was a good experience, but I can’t help to think that most from other schools were almost stupid. I just can’t help thinking were they the ‘bright’ ones at their schools? All other major schools in the area took part, with the exceptions of Wilsons and Sutton Grammar, I now think I know why!
I’m craving for half term in two weeks time, I can finally finish this site and other little projects I’ve got in progress currently. (I really shouldn’t multitask!)
Until Monday, Bye