Italian

I have finally done my Italian speaking exam. I am so slow at getting scared. In my Italian lesson at 11.20 I finally got scared with my oral in 2h40m. I then when going to the library got coerced into going to a talk by Benedict Allen who is an explorer and is recording some documentary (check it out on the BBC in November as I might be in it for 2 seconds). Anyway, so I had 15 minutes to prepare for my oral during which i think I did a pretty decent job. I walk upstairs to the language corridor having awkward smiles with every single language assistant and then sit down with my role plays and luckily they're easy. I've prepared for them and any unknown questions and memorised them and I sit waiting for the inevitable footsteps of Mr Wood. I'm dragged into the classroom and then it seems like the next second I'm leaving and he's telling me to carry on with my life (whatever that means). The important thing is though that i think I did okay and I have got over my first hurdle. All those doing orals next week, especially German, good luck and try and remember to smile at the teacher as otherwise they'll give you odd looks.

(Post-writing thoughts: that was far too long for just saying that my Italian oral went fine)

My brain (or perhaps lack of it)

There is probably something seriously wrong with me as I have an Italian speaking exam tomorrow and I still haven't taken it in. I also have one week till my first proper exam and yet I spend my evenings procrastinating and reading articles about how to avoid procrastination. The worse thing about this is that I know it is perfectly normal. I have a strange psyche which seems to try and convince me that i am in some way superior because of my failings, what's wrong with me? Why do humans have to be so intelligent and yet at the same time critically flawed? I'm thinking about survival as natural selection only picks the kind of intelligence that will help you have babies (and people wonder why society is what it is today). If man were to realise the complete ineptitude of his situation and the brevity of his life then he would just give in but somehow there is something in us that keeps us going. There are many words for it: hope, belief, religion, optimism, naivety it varies from person to person but most of us know it and experience it. I think the point I'm trying to make is that we are beings who are adapted for survival but we sometimes let that get in the way of some of the phenomenal stuff that we also are. We experience so many different emotions and the world, although it may be filled with unknown grief, also has beacons of joy that make our lives bearable. We must ralley and stay positive during these exams and let ourselves taking pleasure in the simple things around us but we must also keep sight of other people and our futures.

Keep surviving!

Isles of Scilly

We have broadband! Horray! I am not going to be completely out of contact for a whole week. Today at 2.45 I boarded a helicopter at Penzance to fly over to St Mary's and am now settled in the conservatory of a house my family is sharing with one family of cousins (two boys aged 7 & 10). I will be able to get at MSN in the evenings but during the day I will be island hopping and enjoying in the delights of my family! Anyway that's all for now but I'll keep you updated.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.



Aggh! Emma Watson????

Shirt

I bought a t-shirt today at River Island. Go me! Its black with crazy texturing and it is my first t-shirt which actually shows how thin I am. I don't know if that's good or bad but I'll find out.

iTunes vs, Windows Vista

iTunes isn't playing along happily with Windows Vista. It keeps on having problems with displaying text and graphics (see here) and I have to keep on restarting iTunes. Now this may not be so bad but seeing as Apple have had ages to fix it (I'm including the stage when Windows Vista was in beta) it is a bit odd that they haven't sorted it out. Now Apple have just been really nice and announced DRM-free tracks with EMI but on this case I have a feeling that they are being rather naughty. The only motivation of slowing down the fixing process would be to through discredit on Microsoft, but why? Apple should just get their act together and deal with it! AGGH!

Study Food

I have been eating the strangest food recently. For example this morning I had two pitta bread with peanut butter and for lunch I had two pitta bread with peanut butter; same thing yesterday. I have lost all will to eat proper food and am surviving on a base diet. I'm sure there are people out there though eating much worse. I better eat my banana now to make me feel better.

Shopping

I finally confronted my fear of clothes shopping. I have in the past been scared of going into shops in case all the clothes are to big for me and I look silly and get told that they don't make clothes for children. Today I managed to go into quite a few clothes shops with my friend Ben (who doesn't go to St Paul's) and tried on some clothes. Admittedly no more than a third of the clothes in the shops came in sizes that fitted me but I did find some really nice stuff; only problem was, they were really expensive! I have finally had to make the jump between children and adult clothes and I feel really annoyed. I want the clothes but I can't have them :-(. In the end I bought a sweatshirt from NEXT but resisted an amazing short sleeved shirt that cost £45! I hope to carry on these exploits but it will be definitely harder next time if I go alone.

Revision

I did my first ever revision session today and it didn't go to badly. It was 45 minutes of Biology on the GCSE bitesize website. I've decided that because I'm lazy I'll start off with Bitesize and then once I've drained it I'll look at the bits that challenge me in more depth. I survived but I'm depressed because my lava lamp has broken and my desk is no longer bathed in its glow. Only 1.5 hours more of revision so I better get it done. I've settled on 3 units of 45 minutes a day. Is that more or less than average?

We will survive!

Revision Plan

My parents forced me to write a revision plan so I have made one but with some slight additions to make it more fun. (whoops spelt Scilly Isles wrong)

Windows Vista v Linux

I am dictating this blog posting using windows speech recognition. I have just installed windows vista on my computer. Windows Vista is working fine but it has some annoying features. The security is slightly overdone for example every time you wish to open an Exe file it opens up a full screen window where you have to click a button to accept the opening. Another example is the installation of drivers I have a network printer which connects over the Wireless network, I had to install a combination of four drivers and then I had to use some computer wizardry to detect the printer. I am now trying to start a new project. My sister’s laptop only has a 40 GB hard drive, I am trying to put up some Network Storage box I failed to do it with the apple G3. My next door neighbours, the Mays, have given me an old Compaq Computer. I was planning to run windows home server on it but the specifications were not high enough. I am now trying various Linux solutions but I am having some difficulty. So far I have tried Ubuntu server edition and freeNAS. Ubuntu server edition worked but was far too complicated and freeNAS had mounting problems. Well I think I’d better finish the article here. When background noise was minimal speech recognition had no problem but there was a lot of background noise for most of the writing making this article a long and drawn out process. Certainly a fun feature but perhaps not the most efficient. Enjoy the holidays and good luck with revision.

Embeded banners badges

I've gone slightly over the top on placing badges on the blog and now have quite a few. I think it is still quite reasonable but I know some people hate it. Can I please have some feedback and feel free to recommend new badges as well as telling me to remove them. Many thanks!

Exam results

After Farhan posted his results on his blog here are mine:

Maths	91%	A*
Physics	78%	A*
Music	80%	A*
Geography	82%	A*
Biology	89%	A*
Italian	90%	A*
Latin	86%	A*
Chemistry	79%	A*
English	82%	A

Italian Exchange

I have just been told by my Dad that I am getting two Italian exchanges!? To explain, I went to Italy over the Autumn half term and stayed with my Italian exchange called Sofia however there are more Italians than English people so coming over this way there is an issue of who they will stay with. Now one of the extras is a friend of my exchange and my Dad said it would be okay to have her. I don't know how I'm going to cope. Here is the countdown:

Heroes

I'm an addict. I started watching Heroes yesterday afternoon and since then I haven't looked back. It is the most addictive program ever and should have a warning on it like cigarettes. At the moment the only way I believe that I can break free is to finish it. Only six hours to go. Wish me luck.

Revision

I have found the coolest revision aid ever! My scanner came with a program that scans in documents and will then automatically recognise the documents contents. Now this isn't new but what is new is that it can shove stuff like tables into an Excel worksheet so I can scan in loads of tables like vocabulary and have it in Excel to access easily and search or randomize! I should get back to revision but just so you know the program is Nuance's OmniPage SE 4 (the company also does amazing speech recognition software).

Weekend

The tea went really well, I won at the jumping game (similar to this) and it was loads of fun. World of Warcraft is working and its great so I need to go but I shall be free to talk (and type) on Monday.

Catch-up

I'm almost entirely up to date from missing Monday afternoon and Tuesday but it'll be a long afternoon to clean everything up. Its the CU Tea this evening after school (yAy) so I shall be at that till seven and then I rush on the bus to get back home in time for fish and chips at 8:15 (Christian youth group). I shall tell you how it all went, and if anyone broke a limb at the Tea, tomorrow I hope. Unfortunately for you though I will have downloaded my World of Warcraft trial by then so you'd better hope its not to good.

Have a good weekend!

BBC iPlayer

The iPlayer is the piece of software from the BBC which will allow viewers to watch all their programs for free within seven days of showing. All the information i could get was limited. A Google search of the BBV site have me this. The website for the iPlayer is password protected.

Update
Found this good site about it.

Update
What is up with this. Done more research and found this BBC page. What is the other one then?

CU Speech

Scary Elmo

New Printer

I'm really getting into this blogging thing it's my new way to procrastinate after Facebook.
Today I managed to get my Dad to finally get a new printer. It has built in wireless and networking as well as a scanner, memory card reader, and 2.5 inch colour screen. It is Canon's PIXMA MP600R and has been bought to replace a rubbish old Epson which is significantly over 5 years old at a rough estimate of 9 years old. The printer looks really cool and be prepared to see lots of scanned images in future blog posts.
Otherwise in my life I have got myself addicted to a online comic called MegaTokyo which is a mix of American style comics and Manga and am working my way through the 950 past episodes.

Crazy Kodak Video

The Sarah Jane Adventures

I just finished watching The Sarah Jane Adventures on BBC1. It was fun but not quality TV. It is a Doctor Who spin-off and in the same way that Torchwood was Doctor Who adapted specifically to adults The Sarah Jane Advenures are aimed at children. It is fun but not challenging in plot choices and does not bring the same atmospher of thrill and excitement that Torchwood and Doctor Who succeed at. This evening is the last episode of Torchwood for the first season but there will be a second season and it has been some of the best TV for a while. If you haven't seen Torchwood then I reccomend that you go out and buy it straight away, the box set of the whole series is unfortunately not out yet but the seperate DVDs can be purchased or preordered.
Today I recieved a few more presents as my grandfather visited bringing gifts from other family members, I got House of M which is very good and I have already finished. House of M takes the two big Marvel teams (The Avengers & The X-Men) and puts them into one story which shakes the very foundations of the Marvel Universe. A thrilling read that is truly in touch with all the varied characters in it.