Studying for my finals..

Found out this morning that Tony next door died last night of an aneurism. I did not know him that well. He's more a neighbour to my folks than me because I'm never around and I was living away most of 97/98. We did have a chat once when he gave me a lift to university some years ago. He seemed a nice guy, content with the life he has made for himself. He'd only just retired and had started in on all those jobs you label as "to do during retirement". The tree in his back garden that he was trimming recently is being finished by relatives as I type. Reminders of things he never got to finish being obliterated. While my Grandma celabrates her 77th birthday, Tony will never see 70. Although it doesn't affect me much because I hardly knew him, I raise my glass and wish him a safe journy to wherever it is he is going.

Did my first oil change today. Just thought I'd mention it. Another task that I haver never done before successfully completed!

I've been concentrating a lot on my final year project lately. This means a large cut-back in other interests. The playstation is packed away in order to avoid distractions. After getting addicted to several games lately I can't afford time away from my project. Its proving quite a challenge but I'm beginning to appreciate challenges. If you complete them its a great buzz untill the next one. If you fail, come at it from a different angle but don't give up no matter how hard it appears to be because giving up can become a habit. If you belive you can do something, you can given enough time, thought and resources.

Referring to the distractions I mentioned. The first was Tomb Raider 3 which I have had sitting on my desk for a while now gathering dust. I decided to play it last sunday afternoon and by the early hours of monday morning I had completed it! I just loved the puzzles in it that required you to actually use your brain to progress further into the game rather than using skill to shoot the enemy. Afterwards, Koony lends me Silent Hill to have a try of. Silent Hill has to be the best game I have ever played and I've played games on computers since 1979. thats twenty years! Finished it in 3 days! (GOOD+)

Konami have a winner on their hands here. The graphics, sounds and game engine provide an eerie atmosphere that makes you want to stop playing now and go watch an episode of your favourite kids cartoon just to bring your heart rate down. To say its scarey is an understement. It scares the crap out of you! I guess the fact that I was playing it mostly at night with the lights out, stereo headphones on and the dual shock analogue controller (gives heartbeat feedback of character) was a silly thing to do. I won't go into the game here in detail because I'm sure other sites will do that for you. I'd just like to say that the puzzles in the game kept my brain working on overtime and I loved it! You can easily progress through the game on easy/normal levels by avoiding the enemy and finding loads of ammo/health where available but if you can't solve the brain teasers laced throughout the game, you won't progress much further. Sure, you can surf the internet and find the answers if you are really stuck but thats not fun at all. The fun is in sitting there for ages with your heaps of paper notes trying to solve the puzzle in front of you so you can open a door.

Went ice skating for the first time since I was a kid on a school trip. Took me about 30mins to find my balance and to start moving about the ice without the aid of the barrier. Another 30mins later and I was well happy with my progress. Note to self: Learn how to stop.

I read somewhere that if you want a more healthy lifestyle, as well as eating enough vitamins, minerals and fibre. You should also raise your heartbeat well above normal at least once a day. By this, they mean you should do some form of exercise that leaves you breathless, thus increasing the amount of oxygen entering your blood stream. This will increase your cardiovascular system and force your metabolism to work faster. I decided that getting up early on a morning and running the dog around the estate should do the trick. The problem was that the dog, once started, was not happy to stop and then start again and again. It wanted one continuous run whereas my body was screaming to stop immediately or it threatened to take up a horizontal position upon the pavement.

The cold morning air streaming in through the nostrils doesn't half wake you up though. A lot better than the usual cold face splash followed by a cuppa tea which is my usual method. Plus the energy exerted makes sure you are full of energy afterwards. Instead of feeling tired towards 5pm, you tend to feel like you still have some energy to exert. Maybe I should try this more often. I've been thinking lately about possible activities that you can do in this area to provide periods of fun and recreation. It would certainly elevate the constant boredom of studying and coding.

Got another film from my e-mate Dave Diamond. A hopeful film student in Wales, Dave is hoping to be the Welsh answer to Tarentino. His latest WIP flick entitled "Grand Theft Auto" is not too original (see the film "Shopping") but you can tell he puts his all into his films. His best one yet was the interview with a local cinema manager and projectionist. Very informative. After watching one of his films you are left wondering if you yourself have the guts to stand in front of a camera and try to act. If so, what sort of film would you make?

My replacement monitor has decided that it is now only going to show everything in shades of yellow 100% of the time from now on. Its getting rather annoying and makes everything look like its being viewed through a bowl of custard.

I was supposed to be travelling down to Ipswich today with friends for a weekend of fun but events conspired to put ruin to best-laid plans. Instead I find myself driving my mam to Morrisons to do the weekly shopping. Something that I haven't really done in a while since I used to drag my mate JP around Tescos and annoy the hell out of him by reading the pasta sauce labels. We notice a weird noise in the car and realise that all the doorknobs are going up and down. I think I have an earth problem with the cars wiring somewhere. Lately I've noticed that I can increase the cars dashboard and headlight illumination by giving the car more gas. Strange.

Matters become complicated when the ATM fails to dispense any cash to the long line of customers including my mam. I offer to use my card but as luck would have it (phew!) we run into my sister with owed funds. While shopping we run into more of our clan. We hold a reunion in the soup isle. I play with my nephew and niece while the adults talk about the price of fish these days. I miss the days when I ran up the isles with my shopping trolley and jumped aboard much to the annoyance of the shelf stackers. I miss being twenty.

Bad luck usually occurs in threes and today is no exception. The computer tills and pumps at the petrol station break down and I'm stuck in a long queue while the staff process the card payments manually while attempting to turn the pumps back on by banging the keys on the till keyboards. I marvel at their techniques not daring to tell them I'm trained in the field of computing lest I receive the full wrath of their over-the-spectacles stare. I state that I only filled up with ten quids worth of unleaded on pump 4 as the computer comes back on line minus all current transactions. "Not 42quids worth of diesel then?" she says while looking at her green on black screen. "Er.. no" I reply daring her to prove how I can fit that much fuel in a small car that would require an engine transplant in order to run on anything other than 4-star or unleaded.

I decide to finish off this wondrous day with the 8-pack of draft Guinness that was on special offer at the supermarket. All thoughts of my university project and Java start to fade away as each can adds to my overflowing rubbish bin. So far my Java notes map onto 4 A5 pages. Each heading contains an asterix next to it referring to the single footnote. The footnote reads "see C++".

The 'variety' thing is still progressing. Instead of just food though I've gotten into the habit of waking up each cold english morning and strolling over to the wardrobe and actually thinking about what I'll wear that day. As students, you tend to fall into the habit of rolling out of bed in time for lunch or the last lecture, and pulling on your faded Levi's and the T-Shirt currently at the top of the clean pile. As an employee in the corporate world, you have probably fallen into the habit of getting up early each morning, donning the shirt and trousers you pressed last night and choosing a tie from your favorite three or the one you wear on this day of the week. Choosing something different once in a while can make a difference. You may actually feel better about yourself that day.

Its been a long time in coming but I've decided to get my hair cut. I guess you can say it was my decision as I actually said yes as the hairdresser sped over here before I had time to change my mind. My family have been subliminally suggesting that it needs cutting for some time, combined with my desire for change, I gave the all go. I can't really remember why I grew it long exactly in the first place. Maybe it was to do with my tastes in heavy metal music or more a way to break free from the norm. I think that long hair makes you look less corpulent so it seemed a good excuse to let it grow as my chocolate diet increased proportionally. In the end I only let her cut it back to just past shoulder length. I think cutting hair should be done in stages to reduce the shock level.

I actually got a lot of reading done over the weekend for once. I'm usually one for borrowing a huge pile of books from the library and then not scheduling any free time in which to read them. I think the fact that my PC monitor blew up on friday night, may of had something to do with it. I just switched it on, it went POP and that was it! I was working on it till the early hours but to no avail. One good thing that did come out of this though was that I discovered that after about 2am, BBC2 runs a learning zone program. Not being one to watch BBC2, especially after midnight, I sat there tinkering with my monitor learning about DNA and Genetic Engineering.

All clouds have a silver lining though and mine came in the form of Hing who located me a temporary monitor that would allow me to continue computing until I could purchase a decent one. The Goldstar 15" monitor works ok and has no side effects unless you suffer from epilepsy. It changes colours more times than I change channels. (Many thanX though Hing!)

As well as books for my course, I do read the odd piece of fiction now and again. One book I read recently which I'd like to recommend is Final Victim by Stephen.J.Cannell. Its about a US Customs officer (John Lockwood) who broke the rules once to often and is stuck in a computer lab with a female civilian computer expert. After discovering that an anonymous remailer is hosting hidden sex chat sessions, she convinces Lockwood to help her get a famous computer hacker out of prison in order to help them crack the remailer after her repeated failure. After doing so, they discover a computer criminal known as The Rat who boasts about his stalkings and murders on-line. Events turn bad though when The Rat turns out to be more than a match for their hacker and traces them to their physical location and starts killing their friends and family. Well worth a read and in a similar vein as Bad Memory by Duane Franklet.

I was watching Forever Knight tonight when I recall a friend saying they had met Nigel Bennett. I'm suprised he's still popular because the series is so old. Maybe he' doing something else that I don't watch? The point though was that I was thinking about somethings age. Maybe its the fact that I was part of a warez scene at one time that I have this ageist attitude when it comes to entertainment. In the warez scene, if it's over a week old, its yesterdays news. We want the latest! Always!

So how do you define a things age? Forever Knight is old by the actors point of view. Filming ceased years ago. From Americas point of view its fairly old also because it aired so long ago. By our standards though its new because we have not seen it before. I have been waiting a long time for series 3 though. SKY just took their time buying the rights to show it. But because others have seen it years ago, does that make it old? Maybe, maybe not. I still have this age fixation though on entertainment. I get pissed when the Sci-Fi channel starts showing a whole month of re-runs of Highlander: The Raven when I have an episode guide listing details of all the episodes I am waiting to see. Whats the delay?

I guess things age and thats a fact. If you haven't seen them before then great, the wait might of been worth it. But those of us who are less patient when it comes to access to the latest entertainment releases, will just have to scream at the box or write suggestions to SKYs feedback email address.

I've decided to set myself small tasks or goals to make life a little more interesting rather than strolling through life doing the usuall 'everyday' stuff. First thing was to add variety to an otherwise boring menu. I'm trying new foods and styles of cooking that I have not tried before. My ex-colleague Sue had a hand in this. She told me I should try things I have never tried before. However, I'll draw the line at drugs and morris dancing, as someone famous once said. Yesterday I cooked crab meat with peppers, corn and rice. Today it was Tortillas. Not exotic but a far cry from spuds, peas and bangers. I did suggest calamari to my mother but the reply is not printable.

Other than cooking I intend to attempt tasks that I would usually pass on to someone more qualified. I'm honing my electronics skills so that I can repair electronic equipment and I'm not doing to bad with car mechanics. Hopefully I'll be able to service the car myself from now on.

Successfully completing a task that you have set for yourself that you were unsure that you could do, is very rewarding. What have you attempted recently?