Diary of an up and coming sociopath

The programming was finally completed yesterday. Anyone interested in what I’ve been doing can go to the easyworld site and visit the “Links” section (bottom left) where you’ll find the script I wrote in working order. Obviously there’s a load of behind the scenes stuff that the user doesn’t see, but that’s basically it. Thanks go to Paul Annett for giving me that work. I haven’t done any programming for someone else before, so it was good to see that I was able to fill the requirements without turning it into a huge horrible mess. He seemed pleased with it anyway.

Yesterday we had the normal morning lecture congregation in the kitchen where Ian, George and I stand around bleary-eyed and semi-coherant before making our way up to the Bus Stop. Once we got on the Bus, we were again presented with the mind-numbing choons of Fox FM. More on that in a bit. After the bus got going, it moved a stop onwards, and then ceased movement for upwards of ten minutes, leaving us to postulate that Public Transport should be renamed Public Storage. During the intervening time I was wondering that, were there an apocalypse or war of some kind, would buses be used to evacuate of cities? Would it be a good idea to steal a bus to use on your nomadic trek to a safe part of the country? I decided that I’d probably stick with the fiesta, if only because I know how to drive that and it wouldn’t use as much petrol. Unfortunately for us, the world didn’t end and the bus deposited us at Wheatley. Regadless of what anyone might tell you, this is a terrible, terrible way to start the day off.

The lecture was presumably interesting. I don’t remember falling asleep which tends to imply there was something good said. I don’t remember anything specific from it so that means it wasn’t great, but I was definitely awake. We left a little early, and got the bus back. While sitting at the front, we noticed that we couldn’t actually see out of the windows due to condensation, so we decided to opt for the next best thing you can do to windows, and wrote stuff in the mist. I opted for “BUS” in mirror-writing, where George drew a smiley face. Ian had just finished writing “BROOKE2 SUCKS” (because he got his mirror-s backwards) when a guy came upstairs and asked to check our passes. They were unrelated matters, of course, but he did mention the window writing, prompting Ian to make an excuse and wipe it off. Such adventure.

When we got back, I watched the new Angel episode which was great, and Ian and I watched the new Enterprise episode, which was a vast improvement over recent episodes, though being kicked repeatedly in the crotch would be a vast improvement over recent episodes.

Anyway. Radio. Let me tell you, morning DJ of Fox FM - “Fly By” by Blue(?) is not the kind of music that warrants being played so long after its release. I’m increasingly disappointed with the state of all radio, really. Radio 1 maintains a consistent level of unlistenability, and I find Chris Moyles is nothing short of awful these days. I admit, back in the days when “My Name Is” was first released and he would tune ot “Slim Shady” and fill it in with things like “Captain Hollywood”, I found him quite funny, but looking back the time I heard him doing that was coming back from Stratford with Josh and Sam, and Sam was driving, which means we’re talking about about 5 years ago now, and the jokes are much less funny. Sarah Cox was even close to listenable, and Zoe Ball was only marginally less annoying. Virgin’s presenters aren’t bad, I admit, but since they got rid of their no-repeat 9-5 day it’s a quagmire of repeated songs over and over and over, usually interspersed with either Queen, U2, the Stereophonics and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I’s probably written into the charter that any half hour period must contain one of those artists. XFM used to be the closest I could do to a good radio station, but even that is a bit crappy nowadays, though Lauren Laverne being on in the afternoon means I sometimes listen to it. My current station of choice is BBC’s 6Music. The shows are quite distinct in what music they play, but the ones I like have a bizarre mix of the very latest bands, and some very old bands, people from the 60s and 70s who didn’t play rock or disco, for instance.

Anyway. I just discovered that next week I’ll get the chance to do some more testing at Aqua, and likewise, I should have some more programming to do for Paul, so it’s looking like I’ll be set financially for the rest of the term. It’s amazing, I’m almost 3 weeks in and still in the black! I can’t remember the last time that happened. Admittedly, the rent is about to come out and that’s going to tip the monetary scales firmly in the direction of “overdraft” but that new monitor that I keep claiming I’m about to buy looks likelier than ever.