the end.

thankyou to those who tried. hopefully karma will be kind to you

dirty hacks...

cause more problems than they are worth. I feel a major rewrite in my waters... :(

How odd...

Today has been a strange day. Doctors appointment was odd, saw a doc I'd never seen before and she certainly had a different approach but I didn't really get a chance to get across how I really felt. And how I feel at the moment is, to be honest, not great. This afternoon was the first time I'd felt really properly depressed in some weeks. Thankfully it's mostly passed but I generally just feel a bit sad. Still no sign of the shoe!

A little update

(take 2 since facebook decided to make my first version mysteriously disappear!)

Firstly thank you to all of you who have given me words of encouragement/support over the past few days, I've been having a pretty rough time and it's always nice to know people still care!!!

Following from several meetings with my tutor, doctor and the preclinical dean they have decided that I'm not medically fit to sit my exams/ do my iDSE and so they will let me sit them in September and do some sort of alternative assessment for my DSE. This is a lot better than what I previously was considering which was either struggling thru these exams and failing/going crazy or completely dropping out. This solution gives me some time to sort my head out without burning too many bridges. I've come to realise that when I suspended last year I didn't really sort myself out, I just got pumped full of (very, very groovy) drugs and then went home and got looked after for a few months. Yeah, this got me stable but I didn't really learn how to manage my own life/work/health!

So over the next couple of months I need to find myself something independent to do which will provide me with challenges to overcome under my own steam but still won't be too stressful (suggestions on a postcard/wall post plz).

Hopefully I can finally kick this thing in the arse!

Some good news and a quick software review!

So my phone is back from repair! Well, actually a completely new phone is now mine, since the other one's touch screen was FUBAR. Which is nice, since it was a little scratched and dinted. But, this comes to the problem of transferring all one's contacts, messages and documents across. Thankfully there is a fab little bit of software called backup manager 4 from Czech company Sunnysoft. This backed all of the above to an SD card with minimal fuss (apart from needing active sync to install - thank god for housemates and their windows laptops), and then restored it to the new machine with no problems whatsoever (it even restored my desktop background, menu entries, shortcuts and custom hardware button assignments!!). All of the above was done under the 7 day trial period, but I'm seriously considering splashing out on the mere tenner it costs to buy!

Now to get the wifi card working and tomtom installed (if that gps ever bloofy turns up...)

Dodgy weed warning

From indimedia via dogbomb. There is increasing evidence of skunk being contaminated with small beads of silica or glass to give the impression of THC crystals and increased weight. Keep your eyes open, guys.

Intelligence Returns to Kansas...

...as their school board gives "intelligent" design the boot! From el reg . This is fantastic news and i'm sure everyone over at venganza will be delighted. Unfortunately this also means the campaign to get pastafarianism taught in schools has been put back a further step :(

mmmmm crusty!

So, after mad panics (the wine not being delivered) , rushing around like a mad man and worries about no-one showing up, the inaugural Bristol LDYS "drink liberally" wine tasting went ahead! In the end we had 13 people which was spot on for one case, a good mix of people as well. The whites were generally more interesting and showed a greater variation than the reds (which is a shame, since I love my red), and I ended up flogging the case at a (very) slight profit. Went out to po na na's afterwards which was belting but couldn't sustain the partyage too long due to copious volumes of wine consumed previously! Woke up at 9, still shit faced so went back to bed. Woke up again at 11 with conjunctivits! lovely!

Wine, whine and well... um wine!

Wine- as in wine is not an emulator. runs google sketchup very nicely (well, v 0.93 does, tis in the winhq repository, the one in universe is a little older)

Whine - me such a hypochondriac sometimes. only to myself, though. I thought I had some kind of degenerative muscle wasting disorder but turns out I'd just been cycling round in a really high gear all day - d'oh!

and Wine! I really hope tommorow goes well - firstly, I'll have a lot of egg on my face if it doesnt, secondly I'll have a very empty wallet if we don't get the numbers, and thirdly it will be great if we can pull of a well attended cool bristol ldys public event!

My take on a couple techy things of late

Firstly, a little Wii review. Firstly a little disclaimer - I'm not usually a console fan at all. I think PC gaming is where it's at - in fact, the last (and only) console I owned was a Nintendo 64 which I bought on the cheap from my cousin. Good now that that's out the way I can crack on - so, my housemate has disregarded all sound financial advice and has got himself one of these jobbies. First impressions were pretty good - the box itself looks reasonably sekshy in a sort of well... white way!! First fired up and initially was graphically disappointed but then I remembered I was watching interlaced video thru a composite cable on a standard CRT telly not the minimum 1280X1024 on an LCD i'm used to. To cut a long story short it's a great laugh - not the intense, graphically astonishing, mega-immersive experience of playing something like FEAR on a decent PC but just a bloody good laugh. The pendant in me occasionally bemoans the lack of realism in wiisports (e.g. boxing with no arms must be difficult and a greater choice of clubs in golf would be nice) but then again that's not really the point of it. A final note - drunken wii bowling is a great thing but drunken wii golf can induce fits of rage and do great damage to your overall skill points!

Secondly Windows Vista - not quite sure why I'm honouring this with my words but I'd be foolish to deny that is wasn't an event. As far as I can see the things people are really raving about (like aero and the gui refinements) have all been available (and have been improved on since) on mac or linux for many a long time. The touted security improvements have been debunked by various experts (OneCare getting a complete thrashing here) I really don't think Vista will be considered a crucial upgrade for most windows users for some time yet. We'll have to see what DX10 turns out to be like to see if there's anything really new on the gaming front! What really gets my goat is all the different versions and their associated licensing nuances - this stinks of an effort to confuse the customer and find ways of eeking extra money out of them for things the OS should do anyway. At first I never used to see why people care so much about Free software and the GPL but now I'm beginning to see why it's so important to have a license that makes sure the user's rights are looked after and your not going to get shafted.

iPhone - jeez, get over it. basically it's going to be pretty but technologically behind the times and there are already things out that will do what it does only better. It's overpriced, too. Bet it will sell by the shedload....

Steve Jobs & DRM - ok you seem to be saying the right thing, but what about fairplay?

Feisty Fawn - why can't it be april yet?!!! :excited:

An atheist's 10 commandments

Shamlessly snarfed from teh intarweb but seems right on the money to my eye....


1. Have no gods.
2. Don't worship stuff.
3. Be polite.
4. Take a day off once in a while.
5. Be nice to folks.
6. Don't kill people.
7. Don't fool around on your significant other.
8. Don't steal stuff.
9. Don't lie about stuff.
10. Don't be greedy.

Remember, theists may condemn you for living by this code because you are doing it of your own free will instead of because you're afraid that if you don't a supreme being will set you on fire.

Sleep

God that was one hell of a sleep· The kind where you feel like you've been drugged, woke up twice but still completely paralysed (I hate that, seem to be getting more of that lately). Had such a good weekend away, very happy :)

Need to get off my arse to sort things for the party and vet stuff as well. First I need to find and retrieve my keys!

And so, the daily grind recommences

A day late, but I finally made it back into uni! Had a good rest yesterday then went to a lovely rioja tasting (mmmmmmm wine!). God I'm not looking forward to CNS physiology, but wish me luck nonetheless

FUSE on Mac

FUSE is a wonderful, wonderful thing and now the Macrophages can have it too! Well done google for porting this (via slashdot)

Oh, that wasnt so bad...

:D After all my fretting parasitology went ok. Most prob since it was the only one I actually did any serious revision for. Managed to skirt around the bits I hadnt got round to revising via choices of essay questions (once i'd finally read the question and reaslised I didnt need to do all of them - doh!). Near cock-up by not reading the questions on the reverse side of the paper. All in all not too bad, still doesn't really make up for the other two shitty ones :S

Well, here we go

First post. Got fed up with playing with wordpress so I guess I'd join the herd. Posting using the excellent drivel
lets see how this goes!

Currently doing some top class procrastination instead of actually revising for the parasitology midsessional I have tommorow morning. Starting to doubt not only my own abilities at passing this course, but my suitability for academia at all. Would be so heartbreaking to give up on this dream, but the sad thing is at the moment I find it hard to care. Going to the quacks hopefully later this week (need to sort a few things, including my totally screwed shoulder), see if when I get my next round of meds i can get back into councilling to try and talk some of this through