last.fm

The more observant among you will have noticed a new addition to this blog.

Did you notice?!

It's over there ------>

That blue thing with a list of the most recent tracks I listened to.

Pretty cool, huh?



One of my friends started talking about Last.fm, and I suddenly remembered that I have an account. So I went to the website and tried to log in, but I couldn't remember my password. And I couldn't get them to e-mail me my password, because it asked for my username, which I'd also forgotten.
I spent ages trying all my usernames I could remember, and trying each of my passwords with them (I reuse passwords. I have 3 'core' ones that I use for most things)
It all got a bit complicated....

So I did the only thing I could have done in a situation like that; I phoned a g33k. (This g33k)
I got him to sign on to Last.fm, and find out my username. It was Monkey007. I mean, what kind of idiot comes up with a username like that?! ;-)
Seriously though, I never put numbers in my usernames, because I'm scared of numbers, so it must have been one of those 'suggested' usernames that the website gave me coz all the good ones were taken... =/

Anyway, I tried that with all of my 'core' passwords, and it worked! =) (I can't remember which one it was now...)


So I have downloaded the thingy that hugs onto Windows Media Player tight enough to hear what I'm listening to, and then it tells the internet.

And apparently, it makes you a personal radio station that only has stuff you like on it!
Which really appeals to my Inner Princess, that likes to be waited on, hand and foot. =)

I never knew about the personal radio station when I used it before!



However, this little episode in the soap opera that is my life has reminded me of a little niggling concern that started on Sunday.
I mean, Mike didn't seem at all surprised when I phoned him up and asked for my last.fm username. I didn't even have to explain anything. I just said, 'What's my Last.fm username?', and he said, 'Hold on, I'll just check'.
And on Sunday night, I phoned Elisabeth and said, 'What lessons do I normally have on Tuesdays', and she said, 'Biology and French' without even having to think much.
And the week before, I phoned her up and asked what my holiday dates for this summer are, and she told me.
Those are just 3 of many examples I could give you of people being more 'on top' of my life than I am.

How will I cope next summer when I have to start looking after myself?

HOW?!

These are the kind of things they should have told us in UCAS week.

Is living on your own one of those things that seem impossible, but when you try it, you realise you can do it?! Like touching your little toe to your forehead, and other stuff like that...?

Reading

Today I went to the Reading University Open Day.

It was alright. Just not as alright as it was in the prospectus. And yeah, I know the whole point of a prospectus is to make the university look better than it is, but i just hadn't expected the real thing to be that different.
I'm still an 'Open Day Newbie'...it was my first one. I'll learn!

I still think it's a good university.

Just now I'm slightly more interested to see what Edinburgh is like! ;-)

Coz, you know, it would be nice to be in a proper city. There would be more to do. And I'd get an MA instead of a BA.

I have had some slightly concerned people telling me that Edinburgh is one of the drug capitals of the world. But I've never heard that before, and to be honest, I don't think that should necessarily put me off. After all, in the borough I live in at the moment, we are meant to have one of the largest underage binge drinking problems in the UK. And 1 in 3 under 18 year olds who are sexually active have chlamydia. (I think. Or some other similar disease).

And I'm pleased to tell you that I don't have either of those problems.
So I think it's reasonable to assume that even if I move to Edinburgh, I won't necessarily become a druggie.

And Scotland is meant to be a nice place, right? I've never been, but Sandi Thom and Paolo Nutini are Scottish, and they are pretty cool.

In fact, nearly all the people I know who are associated with Scotland are pretty cool, which is more than I can say for the people I know who are associated with England (though possibly because I know more English people. Haha).

And, since I've never been to Scotland, I like to assume that most of the guys there look like Paolo Nutini. In which case, I don't know why I haven't already moved there.


So... now for the clincher....

Will I be able to pick up a convincing Scottish accent in 4 years?!

Biology Field Trip

Today was Day 1 of the biology trip.

I'm not really looking forward to Day 2, because it POURED with rain most of today.

I'm definitely taking wellies when we go back tomorrow.


It's the kind of place that has those really fanatical, David Attenborough - type people. With the anoraks and everything.... And also no signal, so that you cant txt people to tell them exactly how much of your will to live has been lost...

At the end of the day, we did something that can only be described as 'yoga with numbers'. Seriously, we stretched them and bent them in ways that seemed like they should have been impossible. And afterwards, we knew we'd managed to do something difficult, but were left wondering whether it actually did any good...
It is called the Mann Whitney U Test, and apparently is a widely accepted statistical technique.

Anyway, tomorrow we are going back to start our coursework investigations.
I will be looking at the effect soil has on the frequency of the occurance of Bluebells.
I don't know why I came up with that topic, because I know absolutely nothing about it.

Something tells me this is going to be a steep learning curve. =/

By popular demand....

(any single demand is popular on this blog!)

This is The Laptop Bag.

Yes, the one bought in the 50% off, PC World, Bank Holiday Sale before I even knew which laptop I was getting.

As you can see, it has a buckle on the left hand side, and as you can't see, there's vecro on the right hand side. Which presumably makes it ultra-secure.

There is space to carry a (smallish) folder inside it, as well as lots of different pockets, all designed with a specific purpose in mind, for all the different computer accessories and leads and cables and plugs and CDs and instruction manuals that it is necessary to lug around with you.

Oh, and it's got one of those little holes to put your ear phones through.

They really did think of everything.....

It's heeeeeere!

My new Laptop/Notebook/whatever you want to call it is here!

In fact, I'm typing this on it! Can you tell?! Is there a different, more modern, feel to this blog now?!

Vista is beeeeeautiful.

I'm getting the hang of the 'non-mouse' thing really fast. I hate using the mice (mouses?!) that don't have the spinny wheel to scroll up and down, but on this laptop, there are lines along the sides of the touchy square thing that you use for the mouse, and if you slide your finger up and down the lines, it scrolls!!!

(Sorry about my lack of technical terms).

For those of you who are interested, it's a Dell Inspiron 6400.

And now, the information you've all been waiting for:

It's silver with white bits, and it's got the media buttons on the front. =)

Sorry about the flash on the screen.....

As you can (kind of) see, there are little things down the right hand side of the screen. They are not excessively large icons, they are amazingly cool representations of the wonders of modern technology. (They have a proper name, but I can't remember it).

The top one is a clock. An analogue one, with hands and everything. Analogue clocks are way better than digital ones, because it's easier to time yourself when you hold your breath, or eat a banana as fast as possible, or check your pulse etc. when you have a second hand to watch.

The second thing down is a little notepad that you can leave yourself reminders or messages or jokes or inspirational quotes on.

The third thing down tells you the weather and temperature for your location. If you need to know if it's raining, you don't even have to look out of the nearest window. It's there....right at the side of your screen. Incredible.

The fourth thing down gives you news as it happens!!! So, for instance, I can tell you that 14 mins ago, The Guardian published an article entitled 'Harvard Students Scalping Tickets'. Which is really handy. There are so many practical applications of how that could be useful on a daily basis. Like if the world was about to end, I'd know about it, and I'd be able to e-mail all my friends who don't have Vista, and tell them.

The fifth thing is a little photo slideshow. It goes through all the pictures on your hard drive and displays them randomly.

So. I bet you all wish you had Vista now.

The only problem is that I can't find our wireless network to connect to. So far I've been bootlegging someone elses broadband. I know it's technically 'not the done thing', but if they didn't want people connecting to their network, they would have put a password on it, right? So they are obviously just very kind, generous people. Possibly hippies.

And as soon as we find a way of UN-hiding our network, I will join it. This broadband I'm on at the moment is a bit slow, and it keeps crashing. Probably because lots of other people are 'sharing' it.

Eat Fresh

I haven't written about Subway in a while, because, well....I haven't been there in a while.

But my brother showed me this video on YouTube, and I thought I'd share it with you. =)





P.S:
He also told me to tell you that Joseph the female goat has died.
Probably of an identity crisis.

Back from holiday!

I've returned!!!!


I went camping in Cornwall and lived to tell you all about it.


This morning, when I woke up, I did wonder whether it had all just been a really really bad nightmare. But then I rolled over and felt that stiffness you get after spending several days on an airbed in sub-zero temperatures, and realised that it must have actually been real. (I've found that airbeds at room temperature have a completely different effect on my...erm...intercostal muscles (?!) than airbeds in freezing tents).


I know that I am prone to exaggeration, but the sub-zero thing isn't an exaggeration. At all. There was a frost one morning, which means that it must have gotten cold enough during the night to freeze the water, which means that it must have been below zero because thats when water freezes.

Mmmhmm... I know my stuff.



Obviously I didn't know that it was sub zero at the time, but I did know it was cold because Joy's teeth were chattering really loudly and keeping me awake. Also, I felt the need to close up my sleeping bag completely (it's one of those 'mummy bags' that can close so that you just have a little air hold to breathe through), and thats really not like me, because normally when I do that I get claustraphobic and start lashing out, and it annoys the people I'm sharing a tent with.


Anyway. Enough about the coldness. I'll move on to the wetness now.

We were there for 4 days. It rained the whole time minus 2 hours when the sun made a brief appearance. There were a few thunder storms, and we had 29mph winds, which is bad news when you're in a tent. =/

So anyway, eventually we decided we needed a bit of fun, so we went to the cinema to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I had actually already seen it, but it was quite funny, and better than sitting in a puddle, so I joined them. I was planning to shout things like, 'Don't worry, he's not really dead', and repeatedly sing 'I know how it ends! I know how it ends! I know how it ends!' in a really irritatingly childish voice.

I didn't do either of those things though, because as soon as we sat down, one of my cousins tapped the (slightly chubby) boy sitting in front of her on the shoulder and asked him for some popcorn. He grudgingly handed her one piece, and she took it, looked slightly annoyed, and then said, 'Is that all you're going to give me?! You've got loads!'.

It was really embarrassing.

So after that, I kept quiet to avoid drawing attention to myself in case people saw a family likeness...

That has got to be the most quaint cinema I've ever been to. There was a huge sign up outside, saying 'Now with FIVE screens!!!'. Our local cinema has 14.

When we got inside the cinema, it was tiny. There were only about 70 seats in the screen we were in, and it had stale, musty smell, that I assumed was coming from the weird, retro carpet (think Del Boy meets Flash Gordon).

A few minutes after we sat down on the rickety chairs, the trailers started, except there was no sound. Everyboys craned round to look through the little window at the back, to see the guy who was doing the projector. He looked around for a bit, found the volume knob, and turned it up.

After the final trailer, we were all expecting to see the copyright warning, but the screen went red and classical music started playing. Everyone looked at the projector guy again, who was frantically trying to change the film reels in the projector. Eventually he got it in, stopped Mozart, hit play.

We had sound first go this time, except the screen was blurry. We turned around again and saw him fiddling around, trying to get in focus. Through the first 5 mins of the film, it was still shifting in and out of focus, as he tried to get things figured out. In the end, he must've thought, 'Oh, screw it... thats good enough', because he just left it.

Pirates 3 is a very long film. At the end, everyone was stumbling around on the stairs, because our eyes had gone crazy after staring at an out of focus screen for so long.

Humph.

And when I told my Dad the story, he accused me of being like an American Tourist, which was an unnecessarily strong insult, in my opinion. I know that Cornwall isn't exactly the most high tech place in the UK, but they could at least teach the film-projector-operator-guy how it works, before they let him loose on it...