Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Expect the next 6 days to be thin on the ground with updates, for I am about to be deluged with the first of many exams. Yes, in a mere 8 and a half hours I’ll be sitting my first of 3×2 hours exams. My knowledge will be tested and my worthiness gauged. On a Saturday. AGAIN. I’m not sure what it is with the computing schedulers, but they certainly seem to ensure we get the short end of the stick for exam times…

This exam is Information Systems. For those of you interested in what I do for the 9 hours a week I’m not in front of the PC, Information Systems is part of it. IS involves the construction of hundreds of diagrams containing everything you need to know about a system. The purpose of these diagrams is unclear. You’re supposed to program things from them, but frankly I can’t imagine that anyone actually does. They’re bureaucracy in diagram form. I doubt the creators of any of the world’s top software ever went near the formalised versions of the damned things. Information Systems gives a name to things you already know in an attempt to make itself look clever.

If Sociology were Computing, it would be Information Systems.

Have I adequately portrayed how much I don’t think IS is in any way a useful thing to know? Once this module is over, I’ll be glad to forget everything I’ve “learnt” in it. And I use the term generously.

In other news, I’ve been raking in the cash from eBay. I say “raking”, between flogging a spare transformer and some spare DivX CDs I’ve made about £30 so far, which I’m pretty pleased with, and I have money for some comics yet to come.

Today, my comics arrived from Reed Comics - an excellent online dealer who have been supplying some of my comics needs every so often. I bought a collected reprint edition of “Ultimate Spider-Man” which I had, up until now, avoided buying. Partially because I have objections to the “ultimisation” of the marvel universe, and partly because if it’s as good as people have been saying, I didn’t want to shell out the extra couple of quid a month for it. Well, it’s good. Really good. The art is great and the writing is great, and it’s in the traditional Spider-Man style. It’s got me interested in ways the in-continuity version hasn’t for decades. Luckily, it’s also collected in volume upon volume of graphic novel, so I think rather than going monthly, I’ll slowly start buying up those.

Finally, I say again that the website updating is going well. I converted and rewrote another page last night, and for those anxious to see the new design live (like there’is anyone…) I can confirm I’m going to finish it over Easter. I swear.