CLOSED.

Ah, a lot has happened.

But I don’t think it’s worth my time to blog it all.

So this blog is no officially closed/dead. I may restart it if I want the domain again.

Summer!

• I like lists. Numbered lists are better in conversations as one can refer to a number and converse on that topic only, but in this situation, bullet points will probably do fine.
• HTC Desire. Received. It’s great, Android really is a better OS than iOS or BlackBerry, and it’s extremely fast. Only problem is the battery life, which is poor.
• The High Altitude Ballooning project? Going okay. James didn’t have internet, which was a pain. But he does now, and I’m about to get him so we can make a cable. Apparently it’s possible. We might have to just program everything (which we’ve already done, but we’ll look over it, perhaps find an emulator or something) and plan everything, then spend Monday at school with the soldering irons and testing; I don’t think I have one. James might. Should be done by end of Monday. If not, we have tuesday. Then deadline wednesday. Tuesday I need to help out at school for a science day thing
• On that topic, I bought a suit yesterday! It’s basic and was cheap, but still; I quite like it. I’m a slightly strange size.
• I went to Wimbledon. Was brilliant. Saw Nadal win, from one of the little entrances to Centre Court. :D
• All of these points could have photos. Maybe later.
• Thorpe Park was good.
• Cycled to kingston again. haven’t done that in a while. Also bought two albums.
• Doctor Who… well, I have a fairly long opinion on that. Later.
• There’s a blog post I’d liek to write, which isn’t just a quick log of what’s happened over the last week or so, but a sort of comment/me overthinking things again. But i haven’t yet, and probalby won’t for a while, knowing me.

On blogging, exams, stress, football, and being antisocial.

Hm. In one way, I feel bad, that sort of title sounds like it should go with a vaguely interesting post. I’m sorry.

To be honest, the reason I haven’t been blogging is partially the exams, as I’ve said previously, but it’s also, I guess, how antisocial I am. The exam reason is obvious; I’m a student who is aiming for a good medical school, I’m a neek, and I have Indian parents- of course I’m going to be studying. No, I haven’t been revising so much I couldn’t have posted, though; I’ve wasted a lot of time in this exam leave. The anti-social thing is why I haven’t been posting. I don’t mean I’m antisocial as in I hate everybody and anybody, but I have a few close friends and many people I’m sick of, many people I find boring, find annoying, many people who I don’t really care about.

You see, if I was a hardcore party-goer, or took every opportunity to meet up with anybody and everybody I could, or liked massive groups of people I don’t know very well, I would probably have lots to post. There would be lots if interesting things happening, lots of interesting things to do with other people- observations on human life, funny things people said, pictures of people drunk, etc. Entertainment comes from people, other people, because it’s boring when there’s one person not doing too much- however interested or entertained he might be. You might appreciate me posting some anecdote somebody said during a conversation, or a funny or nonsensical statement somebody made, or something, but probably wouldn’t give two shirts about how my exams went, my personal aspirations for the future, or how I have a long list of things to learn and do in the summer. Because that’s useless in your life, and you can’t take anything away from it. And there’s too many people posting details from their mediocre lives on the internet, too many blog posts which don’t mean anything. That’s the main criticism of Twitter; who cares of you’re using your phone in the shower? But twitter still exists, and my blog still exists. And I don’t plan on radically changing my life for the sake of the few people who read this, nor do I plan on inventing a whole new life for your sake. And so this whole site will sink back into mediocrity.

Okay, lets get round to those other things. Football: basically, I don’t watch it. I watched about 20 mins of yesterdays match (England vs Algeria), and found it horribly dull, just confirming what I already knew: the World Cup is overrated. I just find football boring. And England played terribly. I’ll probably watch bits of the final, whoever it is, but not all 90 mins of it. The thing is, I could see myself becoming obsessed with somethign like football; if I got into it, I would probablyu have strong opinions on every team, and would know pretty much everything about all players on the good teams (and England). (see, I made a football joke! Wow!)

I actually had loads of subjects in my title, but I can’t really fit them in.

I’ll end with things I’m exited about:

• Portal 2! Trailer! Gameplay demo! 2011! Woo!
• Summer!
• 3 Exams left, only! (/18)
• HTC Desire! (July 1st!) (I’ll probably do a full review of this when I get it, along with a “Why I switched from iPhone to Android”)
• Balloon Project! (Apex II) (More on that later)

Okay, that’s all.

384

Hi. I haven’t posted anything here in a while. This is for a few reasons.

1. My GCSEs commence very soon- May. These require revision.
2. Nothing particularly interesting has happened in my life.
3. Honestly, there’s little motivation to post.

Some things have happened in the last few weeks

• Kindle arrived. Finally. (Cousin was coming to UK end of Jan. Sending to UK from amazon.com was £50 extra. We sent it to cousin. Cousin’s business deal thing was canceled. He sent it a couple of weeks ago. It arrived 6 days ago)
• Exams.
• I turned 16.
• Kick Ass was fantastic.
• Clash of the Titans was… not great.
• Will Grayson Will Grayson was a good book.
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind is good, so far.

I do have views on the General Election, but that’s for a different blog post. Don’t hold your breath for that one, though.

The last few days have been spent on revision. I’ve gone out once. But other than that, revision.

And I read through my english exercise notebook today. I found this:

[Picture of a chair] Who sits in this chair?

“A Panda. The perfect demographic leader. It is black and white. This is important, because the chair exists in a time not like our own, where instead of the relatively equal rights between men and black men, people who are not white are discriminated against. The panda, in its authorative position, acts to effectively dissipate racial tension”

Slightly younger me, wtf?

:3

Evolution of Language? Or just Illiteracy?

With the current generation of teenagers and young adults hooked onto social networking sites, instant messaging, and texts, it has become essential for the methods by which we communicate to adapt to the times by producing a concise and quick to type lexis. Capital letters are frequently scattered around, for some sort of effect- making the message itself far more difficult to read. Apostrophes are an endangered piece of punctuation, still around solely for their use in emoticons. And proper spelling? Oh, we don’t need that here, this isn’t school!

What could be considered worse is that this looks like it could be an evolution in our language, rather than just a temporary increase in illiteracy. In a poll, conducted through facebook, twitter, and texts, (the participants being teenagers who use the devices which have encouraged these changes) the majority believed that thought that this progression was an “inevitable evolution”- even though some believed that “only thick or lazy people do it”. Others pointed out that although the english language will evolve, this change is “affected by many factors, and hence is not inevitable”.

Of course, this concerns two quite different changes to our language- the abbreviations in “txtspk”, and the grammatical and spelling errors which have found their way into everything we do. Although I can see some reason for the abbreviations due to the 160 and 140 character limits on texts and tweets respectively (even though I personally find that abbreviations are more difficult to read and take longer to type), I cannot see any reason apart from ignorance and stupidity for writing “your” instead of “you’re”, or “there” instead of “they’re”, or “yhuu” instead of “you”. And this is the main reasons why I dislike this “evolution” of language- accepting it would mean accepting that we are slowly drifting towards the language which I currently associate with the uneducated chavs that roam our streets- the chavs I desperately hope will not become our country’s future.

I opine that this perversion of the English Language is not an evolution which should be embraced- and it would be a real shame if future generations find our language as difficult as we find Shakespeare’s. But Shakespeare does eloquently demonstrate how language evolves in just 400 years- and if people do not notice this change, or believe it’s acceptable, or inevitable, then it will be tolerated- encouraged, even. And our language will have changed- for the worse.

Pinhole camera! (and other things)

So I found this, and was like “Hey, it’s the easter, my sister’ll enjoy making this” so I emailed it to my sister, then told her about it, she read it, and decided to make it.

With my help, a spanner, tape, a printer, scissors, a ruler, a swiss army knife, blu-tack, rubber bands, pritt-stick, and a shoe box, she/we created this:

It’s a camera! :)

It’s a film camera, and I doubt the photos will come out well. I’m pretty sure they won’t. And we’ve taken pretty boring photos, too, but oh well, because we made it, so any imperfections are okay.

Yeah, that’s that. We need to wait for a while to get the film developed, though. Which sucks.

Other news, other news, other news.

Well, I’m now part of this balloon project in my school, Project Apex. (Technically Project Apex II, but yeah). The whole thing looks really exciting, and we hope to launch in July of this year. Team involves members from y10 to y14, plus a couple of teachers, and seems to be great. :)

Doctor Who was a disappointment. Dislike new music, logo, and title sequence. And i LOVED David Tennant, so Matt Smith had better be great. The episode also seemed to be aiming for a much younger audience, and so seemed childish- but that may be me growing up. I hope it’s the former.

My wrists are terrible, and have been hurting recently, (=last few weeks), which sucks. :/

Easter means revision for GCSEs. :?

We got a new iMac. It’s beautiful.

iPad’s been released. Whoop de doo? US only. And I still don’t see the point.

I’ve written two articles for the Guardian, but haven’t uploaded them yet. I’m waiting for some more results in a poll for one, and I want to email both at teh same time to my English teacher/the editor, and so will wait for a bit. Since nobody reads them on the guardian website, I’ll upload them here too. One’s to do with language, the other the healthcare reform.

I’ve done my Dick Whitington application form. Really hope I get it- since last year I’ve wanted to, which was when I first heard about it. I really want to do Medicine. The problem is that it says that places are unlikely to be awarded to students from selective schools (me), or students whose parents/guardians went to university (both parents are doctors. :/). We’ll see.

So in the next few days expect photos from the camera, and the articles. :)

I got a distinction in my LAMDA! :)

Didn’t expect that. :D

(LAMDA)

(LAMDA posts)

(also today: geography revision, some general work)

Google China

The most populous country in the world, China, has just lost the best search engine, Google (when I say “just” I mean something that happened a week ago. Sorry.). Dell have also left the country, and hopped over to the second largest in the world, India.

I haven’t really got a particularly strong opinion on this, to be honest. I think it’s terrible that this sort of censorship still exists in the present world, but most people do. I’m also against communism, and I think they’re “democratic dictatorship” thing doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about these things to talk much about them. But generally, the theory behind communism doesn’t make sense in a society where people are not equal- which is the society we live in.

Photoshop’s going to be.. amazing.

I’ve been busy these last few days, and by busy I mean I’ve had no reason to blog.

I practiced being CHristian for a while, in order to trick some people that I was christian on friday (with friends) (exaggerated… slightly. IT was fun).

We formed a superhero team, and ran round the school like maniacs, before astronomy. We’re all year 11. :3

I heard of some awesome game called Spy Party. Sounds great, like really really good. I don’t normally play video games, but… unfortunately, it’s not going to be released for a while… = about 2 years.

This post is simply something to write before the following amazing video. I was like… woah.