Last week! Woop.

So that's it, I have all my work done finally, everything's handed in and I only have a couple more days to go until I can mish it back home for three weeks of utter studenty-type laziness!

Excellent... Time to crack open another can of Foster's and celebrate :D

Also trying out blogging via the Flock browser (based on the same engine as Firefox / Mozilla, but it has much more integration with these spangly Web 2.0 services, but as it's still in beta it's not for the faint-hearted (I had to piss about for ages until I got Blogger integration working!)

It adds Technorati tags automatically though, which is handy.

technorati tags: Uniblog, End of term, Beer drinking

I need two armbands and a rubber ring, stat!

Ok, so some numpty (well, we all actually know who did it... Mentioning no names coughEMOTOMcough) turned on the bath last night for one of the Adams living on our floor.

He turned the bath on, left it, knocked on Adam's door and shouted "the water's running," but Adam apprently heard it as "the water's done."

So, I get a knock on my door from another Tom (Sulley) saying, "you been running a bath?" "Nooo..." "Come look at this then."

This is what I found:









Now this... This is in the entrance to the flats, on the ground floor, right below our first floor bathroom. Note how the water is COMING THROUGH THE CEILING! The door you can see into our (never-used) Common Room also has water on the windows; I opened the doors and was immediately sprayed with water dripping from the piping through a hole in the ceiling (where it had been put), so the water was obviously getting everywhere underneath the floor. Yuck.



How crap is this... Basically everywhere where the floor looks slightly shinier, yep - that's a big puddle of water.



Look at this video (MP4 format) of the bloody thing, it's like a small fountain... Upside down fountain, anyway.







^^^ the culprit, who thought it was (incidentally) pretty funny. He's just fortunate the security guards thought it was funny too. Oh, and it's also an even better job that we're on the first floor, because if there were fire alarms underneath the floor (they're on the ceilings of each floor, we're in a block of flats here) the water would have most probably shorted one of them out and caused the alarm to go off... In turn, bringing three fire tenders here, along with a big load of really pissed off firemen!




...Now I mean honestly, just how hard it is to doublecheck a bath? Tom's not living this one down for a while, especially cause I went for a late-night snack later that night, forgot the floor was wet, and got horribly squelchy carpet underfoot and two very wet 'n horrible socks. Yuck.


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4am fire alarm anyone?

Another fire alarm this morning. Sometime around 4am, strangely I was already awake (I woke up about 10 minutes before the alarm sounded, so I was already pretty compus mentis) but not everybody was as fortunate as me :D

Only two fire tenders this time (aww, we had four last time) - I think they're beginning to get a bit pissed off with this place (every time the alarm goes off, the fire engine has to attend). Got a couple of good snaps, I always bring my camera out with me when the fire alarm goes (my logic is that if there is a real fire, I can document every single one of my possessions being burnt to a crisp and then claim back on the insurance... Or if there is no fire, as is usually the case, I can take some snaps of various people. It's a ritual now, we've had so many fire alarms).

Every time the alarm goes, I always try and dress up warmer than the last time - it REALLY pisses off the people who've crawled out of bed and are stumbling around with duvets wrapped round themselves. I get some very jealous looks :D

Ah, time for a hair cut I think - off into town, get the old mop lopped off, head into Uni, send Helen her birthday card, bosh! Job's a good un.

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Nngh. Rain again.

I'd rather have snow personally, but I suppose rain it is.

Not long now until Easter... Now, what should I make for tea tonight? I have all the stuff to make lasagna with, I just can't be bothered at the moment.

Maybe Chili Con Carne? Mmmm, yeah...

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Meanwhile, a bored Christopher finds his microphone and decides to talk to it

I talk to myself a lot (it keeps me sane) but I thought that I might as well do one of these spangly audioblogs.

I have a nice bit of flash which functions as an inline, in-page slimeline mp3 player, so I'll give that a whirl later tomorrow (when I have the nervous energy, I'm going to bed now... Yes I know it's the morning). Until I get that sorted, if it tickles your fancy (and maybe arouses your curiosity) you can download/listen to the file by clicking here:

My welcome message.


I've decided on monaural 56kbps MP3, not that it really makes much difference for speech... So anyway, now if you've ever wondered what I sound like and fancy finding out, you can.


All automagically, rather clever stuff ain't it.

One hectic week!

Well, I've been busy this past week or so. And on Friday last week, I started to feel ill. Great. It's now Thursday the 2nd of March (ooh ooh, White Rabbit for yesterday! :D) and I'm still feeling a bit rough.

I got another letter from TV Licensing, this time it comes with a mock bill with "Amount Due: £126.50" in red... Hah. I can't even pick TV signals up, so they can send me as many of those as they like.

My second (yes, second) Serenity DVD arrived! Now I have the metal tin special release which was only available in Australia (and yes, I bought it from an Australian retailer) and I have the UK release. They both have that really condescending "You wouldn't steal a mobile phone, you wouldn't steal a DVD, you wouldn't steal a car... Downloading movies is a crime" video on the beginning... But let's just think about this:

I buy the DVD (in my case, two copies! Gotta have a loaner copy for the friends), and I put it into my PC to watch it.

I get a really condescending message telling me to not download movies because That Is A Bad Thing To Do, and I can't even skip it - even though I've just coughed up about 30 quid for both copies, and that doesn't even count the official poster and the limited edition film cells in their presentation frame.

Now, I almost feel inclined to go and download a movie just to give the movie industry a big middle finger, especially if they're going to force that kind of attitude down my neck every time I want to watch the film - do you really think I'd want to steal this movie having just BOUGHT a copy? What a stupid trailer, and it still gives the impression that they don't trust their consumers, which is the worst kind of thing to say to someone who's just spent their cash buying your product.

:D

What else... Ooo! It snowed this week, TWICE (it snowed again early this morning, I woke up to a scene of snow-covered surroundings)... It also snowed last week, but that was more of an intense hailstorm, but it did snow properly earlier this week. These bizarre weather patterns only serve to further confuse me at this rate.

In University news, even though I was ill when a marked presentation section of one of my modules was done, I still passed the module overall thanks to good marks on the other two bits of coursework (a business plan and then a much more detailed business proposal, both for an indie record label based in the West Midlands), so I'm happy about that. I still think I'll have to resit my Signals & Sounds and Audio Electronics exams come summertime, but I've always struggled with those subjects (although I think I'm improving slowly).


I have some photos I must put up at some point... I must find an easier way to put photos onto my blog, short of using Picasa (I hate that program, it gives you such little control over the end result of what the pictures look like).

The house for next year is coming together, yesterday I received my Council Tax Exemption Certificate (and only two weeks later than I thought it would, I rang them earlier last week and they said they'd forgotten to send one out, for crying out loud). Tesco continues to amaze me, this time they've managed to foul up by sending my second week's paycheck to my OLD address (where I've not lived for two years), even though I've told them more times than I can count on the fingers of my right hand that I'd moved - TWO YEARS AGO! - so that required another phone call to the store to get that cheque cancelled, and another one sent to my current address.

Bloody hell. Good job I have 1,000 free minutes on my phone tariff... Which reminds me, I must try again soon to get a job.

At least I'm going to see Magnificent Desolution later today at the Imax where my Uni faculty yes (yes, in the same building, I study in the Birmingham Conservatoire and at the Technology Innovation Centre, where the Imax is - the largest screen in the West Midlands, and one of the most advanced Imax projection facilities in the country! Beat THAT with a stick :D)


Aaah, I just looked out the window and it's blue skies and sun. Spring is coming to Birmingham! Yay \o/

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uniblog coursework snow Birmingham UCE university