alex’s blog

Well, it just seems like yesterday I was messing around with OpenID, yet it was in fact two months ago. I mean since the time of that article I have left school, started work, got into university and finally turned 18! So lets take each in turn.

Back on, I think the 22nd of June I finally left Syon, was a rather sad day as I had been there for 7 years and I think I really am going to miss the people that made my time there so great. (I would especially like to thank TBI for getting me through, without her I wouldn’t have even made it to 6th form.) It was weird going out with everyone to celebrate finally leaving but in a way I was glad as it finally meant I am moving on, moving to what I have always wanted to do.

Leads on quite nicely to work, I am currently working for Zoomf.com, I am currently helping expand there inventory of property and also doing a fair bit of design work. Its a nice little place and if your looking for property in the UK there is no finer place to go.

Next I guess is the fact that I am now 18, legal to drink, vote and party! Had a nice quiet birthday with a few close friends, which I was great.

Now, on Thursday was the day most people have been dreading for years. Strangely enough I felt, kind of spaced out, not really too fussed or scared, I dunno if I knew I would be all right or not, but it turns out I was. I didn’t quite get the best grades ever, but I did enough to get me to NTU doing Computer Science, which is what I have always wanted to do.

Strange to think that in a month and 10 days I won’t be living in Osterley anymore, I will be a full time student in Nottingham, I don’t quite know how I will take the change..

Okay, I buckled under the pressure, I am now a member of Facebook, but its okay because it actually does load properly and not annoy the shit out of you. Try it.

For the past 10+ years now I have been a member of the scouting organisation, this weekend saw the realisation of pretty much what I have been doing for that long. On Sunday I got to meet the Queen and received my Queen Scout’s Award, the highest award in UK Scouting.

Woop.

When 12am struck on the 1st, it felt strange, deja vu if you will, well saying that, I was around at Natalie’s again, with pretty much the same people, but I dunno, it felt a lot like Christmas this year. That it had just snuck up on us. And when I look back at the year I see why, it’s a blur to me, this year has gone so fast that I can’t actually remember much of it, looking back on the blog reminds me, but still, it’s scary to feel like 2005 was only a few days back, when in reality it’s really 2006.. But oh, time to get on with life I suppose.

January, the fun time when exams run riot and everyone that’s anyone is staying indoors and making sweet, sweet eye-love with a text-book, me included obviously. I made the mistake of not doing this last year and failing miserably, thus I am learning like all good brain processing beings. These exams matter now, (like they didn’t before, but meh), and with the approach of actual real, independent life in September/October with my endeavours into University Life and such, this year is probably the most important of my little life. Seems strange to think that this time next year I could be living up north something, studying & partying around.. Just freaks me out a little..

Anyway, that’s about it for now. As for resolutions..

PS.. Anyone else get really fucked off when your Data Drive decides it doesn’t like the file-system any more?

Wow, August was a long time ago and strangely it does just seem like yesterday.

School I suppose should be at the top of the priorities, thus.. (Sorry Nat.)

The last couple of months have flown by, getting to the business I should have started a year back, I am just about on course for my January exams now, I am taking the grand total of 7 exams, comparing that to last year’s 1 at the same time its getting rather stressful. (Don’t worry the other 6 are retakes.)

September was certainly a turning point for me, I suddenly realised, “Heck! I’ve got 8 months now, that’s it..”, actually not becoming what your deepest aspirations are is certainly a great motivator. I guess I am lucky that I do know what I want to be and I have done since such an early age, this means that I have ‘worked’ towards it, well behind the computer desk away from the hellish confines of the school classroom. I am now doing about a chapter of maths work a week and will have to continue this if I have any hope of getting through the entire A-Level in a year, (I am currently doing Core Mathematics 1 & 2 as well as Mechanics 1, for January, then having to do Core Mathematics 3 & 4 as well as Mechanics 2, for June), and taking the places that I have been fortunate enough to be offered.

Brings me nicely on to University, I applied back in October, before I went off to India, (more of that to come actually), about a month later and I’ve now got 6 offers, does quite seem real though that even with my current results I have these, I mean everything is still way up in the air, but I suppose it’s great that they are there and that they are a serious mixture, I will list them purely for archival purposes:

1. Nottingham Trent - 240 Points (CCC)
2. Liverpool - 300 Points (BBB)
3. Loughborough - 280 Points (BBC)
4. Coventry - 240 Points (CCC)
5. Aston - BBC
6. Northumbria - 240 Points (CCC)

To me those offers aren’t half bad, achievable at that, I have already been to Nottingham Trent, Liverpool and Coventry. The inequality shows my feelings towards each; Liverpool < Trent > Coventry, thus I still have to go to Aston and Loughborough which I should hopefully be doing between now and March.

Suppose that’s about it on the whole Uni/school front, just have to keep on kicking my ass into doing the work for the rest of the year and I may have my foot in the door of my future.

Friends and stuff..

When I arrived back at school in September I noticed something. A few people have left. Going into the common room now is like a ghost town, no-one is there not even people that you know. Last year there was a solid gang of about 30 people that used to hang about most days simply because we could, I did a rough calculation a few weeks about that around half the darn year have got up and left, either that or have resat, moved or now do the social life killer known as Business Studies.

I suppose it’s not quite as bad as I make it out to be, I mean I still have a solid group of mates that I hang about with, people from my subjects that invariably trudge down to the common room at the same time as me, but its not like it was last year; constantly being talked at by Zain, felt up by Jamie and freaked out by Joe. But oh well. That’s life I guess.

Seems strange to say this but its been past a year now with me and Natalie, almost a year and a month now, we went and watched the rugby at Twickenham, (unfortunately England lost, but oh well, cant have everything), then we took the train to Waterloo and I tried to look manly going on the eye. I managed to fail spectacularly. But it was an experience going on it at night and if anyone that’s scared of it during the daytime, it doesn’t get much better at night, I promise you. We then meandered up to Leicester Square and had a meal in the basement of this rather nice Italian Restaurant, was great. Walked back through the streets of London to Waterloo and were back home. Was a good night.

That’s about it for now, I will add a bit more later..

Well, what a fantabulous two and a bit weeks its been and fuck me a lot has happened. Friday saw me and 600 others return back to West London after a rather enjoyable 10 days in the Swiss Alps, well in Kandersteg to be precise. A lot of memories greeted me when I turned to this page, after hiking for 4 of the 10 it seemed like the remaining 6 days I had I was on overdrive, rushing about trying to get things in I dont think I really even had much time to sleep..

On the Tuesday (15th) was my birthday and wahey it was.. rather subdued, we went to Italy and got a little drunk but we had to get the 9.30 train back, but I managed to bring in my brithday and show it out rather well.. 14th evening ended up with a free bar after the manager’s wife had just had a baby, damn I love Jagermeister lined bars! The 16th was also rather eventful as a rather mediocre disco turned out to be one of the only partay’s recently that ive actually danced myself into a sweat. Good Times hehe.

Guess this leaves results to be addressed then. Well, they are.. usable. Heck they are better than a lot of people I have spoken to, but they are by no means amazing, B C C D/E is never going to get me into the university that I want to and to be honest now I have got no idea what I want to do.. I am playing ideas in my head.. Apply, get crappy offers, decline them and try clearing. Or go and take a gap year, obviously reapplying in 2008 based on actual results that I get next summer (this involves kicking my ass into shape to get these results).. I think its kinda clear which is my favourite choice, I think I know why though, it involves waiting, it involves the bane of my exsistance, doing things in the future.. It involves me actually making the choice to actually do something next year and getting those damn results and not just thinking that they will come automatically, like its my fucking god given right to have them just because my parents did..

I think thats its time to grow up and finally smell the damn bacon, because something really isnt right in my kitchen.

Right, you all know about The GIMP, the free image editor? It sounds great and ever since I moved over to Linux permanently its been doing a reasonably good job and simple image editing jobs, resizing photos, small touch-ups etc.. But now I have a project that requires a full set of imagery and as the title suggests its like trying to create images without any kind of user interface!

Coming from a full fledged Photoshop Graduate to this I feel very limited and somewhat annoyed about this product, simple things such as a non-visual layer representation, so you have to scroll through the layers, looking at the selection’s produced to know what layer you are on.. The move button is virtually useless and as for any kind of half decent in-built functions, you must be kidding..

The guys developing GIMP have done a great job but just now, I am downloading Photoshop CS2 and am going to have fun with that and WINE.. *Big weight lifted*.

EDIT: Meh, stupid Operating System checks. To the windoze partition!

Well, since exams back in May/June I have been at school again, starting to do A2 work. Finally I think ive finished school for the year, well offically it finishes on Tuesday, but meh. Its just been dragging on and with Natalie off for the past two weeks, and a few of my other friends off for what seems eternity its just plain pissing me off now as it drags on taking the best parts of the Summer with it.

Yesterday was apparently the hottest day of the year thus far, seemed ok to me, but I did pretty much nothing outside yesterday except for having a rather large water fight, yeah thats right, screw that hose pipe ban! Woo!

The other reason I wanted to blog today was because tomorrow I am doing yet another crazy thing for charity, I am going to jump out of a plane. Obviously with a parachute, but f**k me I am scared. Just looking at the pictures in the brochure are rather daunting, added to this the guy who I am doing this with, my lifelong friend Kam, is more petrified than me and he wants to go first so I actually push him out. Grrr. Oh well, i’ve done freefall abseiling before, (just a drop and a rope), and that was great, but when I am hurtling towards the ground at 150m/s (darn Ubuntu, cant find ^-1 :P) I think it will be a little different to tell you the truth..

But heck,

Its the week after the week before. I havent done much, been working rather intensely to try and bring some sort of website to the OpenDocumentPHP Project, however building a fully scalable CMS within a week aint easy. I have now got all the major parts in but I am still working solidly to bring some sort of usable interface and try to bring to the party a set of bug-free features. All the majors that are needed are included, Forum System, Bug Tracker, File Releases, News Portal and the list just goes on… Oh well. At least I am getting yet more experience with large scale database projects, should hopefully stand me in good sted in years to come.

Next Thursday I am going off to Manchester for the day, guess what, my first University Open Day. F*cking scary. Within a year I will hopefully be there as a student. Ive got a load of others lined up, but Manchester looks like an interesting course and my current first choice. It will be a long road to get there, and with them asking for AAB I dont know if its really a realistic bet, but worth a try I suppose.

I also just got my next computing coursework assignment. Well this years, (A2), module for coursework. Guess what, it doesnt have a set idea you have to follow! How good is that? I am currently debating a number of ideas, I want to look at either implementing SAX in PHP, my father gave me a novel idea of trying to go for an image match database; perhaps of faces or leaves. The other option I have, which is by far the simplest to knock off is one where I just create another relational database and submit it, I know I can do it, but its just not challenging, so I think I will throw this outta the window for now.
Anyway, strange how 3 days just seem to merge into one.

Well. Thats start with the weather. Its great. The summer has finally arrived in the South-East of England, been trying to make the most of it while it lasts. Just got back from a barbeque, the second this weekend, going out to another in a minute. With the weather finally changing has come the end of my first year examinations. All 6 of them out of the way until January. Great huh?

A few major developments in terms of computing and stuff. I am currently no longer using WinXP as my desktop machine, with the great leaps Ubuntu has been making I decided to cut my losses and use the new ‘Dapper Drake’, after a few teething problems involving Wireless Cards I would say its been a positive experience, one everyone else that might actually read this should try. It takes a little getting used to, espically in terms of program management and general file organisation. But apart from that Linux as a Desktop is actually a lot better than I expected.

Strange that friday night I got a text from Natalie, it contained the words ‘Happy 7 Months’. Funny how time flies?

As for project news. I haven’t really been involved to much in the development of OpenDocumentPHP during my exams, and it looks like others haven’t really been motivated either. I think its time to crack the whip, but I need to do some actual work first so I don’t really sound like a hipocrite, thus with pretty much everything out of the way now I am concentrating on getting the website up and running and producing a usable codebase that works cross-platform. Shouldn’t be too hard? I hope.

Anyway, must dash.