Josh's Journal

OK, here's that last post I mentioned a few weeks ago (I'm slow, sorry)

Add iosh2 to your flists, and you'll get my entries on your friends page, just like they were normal LJ entries! Big thanks to jezzifishie for sorting that out.

Try and remember though, to come to the blog to comment - I might not notice comments left on LJ.
Also, it'd be nice if you could leave iosh on your flists, so I can keep reading about the lives of all my wonderful friends.

Anyway, that's it for LJ. It's been fun, but it's time for something else.

PS- note the appropriate and completely coincidental music playing!
PPS- as if to remind me why I'm leaving, LJ just crashed out (three times) when I pressed post. Feel free to join me on the better side people!

Hi all. Just to let you know I'm now blogging here because I've finally got around to setting up wordpress after hating LJ's interface, ads, and increasingly ethos for over a year. (The interface is the real reason). There'll be one more post on this journal to let you know where the syndicate feed to LJ is (to make things easy for those of you who don't use RSS yet), and then it'll be all over. I'll keep the account to read up on you all, and to comment, but that's all.
It's been fun - later LJ!

(Insert usual "hello abandoned journal" comments and apologies etc here)
Well, in contrast to kiteyes, I had a very good day today, filled with good news, particularly 3 things:

• I'm going to Reading festival! I've never been to a festival before, so it should be fun. OK, I'm working in a beer tent, but I do get quite a while on a free ticket while not having to work, so it could be a lot worse.
• I've got my insurance claim finally sorted, and have a nice new Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM on its way to me, for the few (none?) of you who know what that means. It's a good thing, trust me.
• And, best of all, I have an internship! From Monday, I'm working at Labour HQ, making content for their website, so doing video interviews and writing and pictures and stuff - the fun side of web design, with politics too! Yaysome. Also, because of timing, I may even get a shiny full pass to party conference, which would be absolutely great.

So yeah, it seems I win at life today. I'm currently working on sanding floors for parents' friends, which is earning me a bit of cash (should pay for holiday), even if it is really boring and horribly dusty.
Oh, and speaking of holiday, we're going to France! A road trip, to stay in an awesome gite. We have 13 so far, for a gite of 16, which works well with cars, but if you'd like to come too and could get yourself there/ find 2 other people and a car, then you'd be most welcome (provided, y'know, that I've actually met you irl). There's a facebook event you should be able to find from my profile if you're interested.
There's been lots happening since I graduated, but I'm not quite up to writing about it now, so I think I'll leave that for another day.
Have fun all!
J xx

...but that's your business. Today we see a handover of power from one great PM, to another very interesting politician, who I think will do great things for this country as well.
I've just watched PMQ's - a very noble end for him, which the whole house can be proud of. Despite the year and a half of annoying speculation about this changeover, an end like this is far far better than Mrs. Thatcher's, which we can be glad of.

So, the end of an era, marked by a few very big, very bad decisions, but many many more positive changes for the country - far better than we could ever hope for under the tories. Best of all, more good on the way.

My oh my, I love Ryanair. Just managed to book 5 return flights to La Rochelle in July for 10p. That's right, 10p, all in. No taxes.

I have no idea why it doesn't have any, and fully expect them to call and say "uh, we messed up, please give us more money" but I thought it was worth a shot. There was a £7 booking charge, annoyingly, and it's hand luggage only (I figured we could add bags once we knew what we were doing), but still. If anyone else wants in, they were flights from Stansted to La Rochelle, leaving on the 13th of July, coming back on the 17th. just a short break, but it leaves after five on a Friday and gets back on the Tuesday, so minimal holiday time for you working types.

Anyway, just thought I'd give the heads up - probably won't work for long.

ETA: There don't seem to be any return flights left for the 17th, but there are some available on the 24th - again, no taxes.

Hehe, just realised that this is, at £1.42 return per person, significantly cheaper than a single bus journey from my parents' house to Guildford centre (£1.90, and daylight robbery it is too).

I finished my dissertation! yay!

Also, UK people, don't forget to vote - polls close at 10pm, there are polling stations everywhere, and it takes 2 minutes of your time, even if you don't have/have lost your polling card. Don't forget, go and do it now. 2/3rds of the country are eligible to vote in something, local elections in England (there are none in London), Assembly elections in Wales and Scotland - please, for the love of god, keep the SNP out. seriously. While you're at it, keep the Scottish Christian Party and Christian People's Alliance (how pythonesque) well in their place on the fringes of political life - or preferably not even there. Why are there so many crazy people!?

Yeah, go vote.

Heh, well, I made it through the start of term surge. Last week, exams in four submodules (of a double module, which means that half of the assessment for that double is done and none of what I did last term will be examined in May) I had my dissertation presentation this morning, worth 5% of another double module... and everything went well! Also, the act of writing my presentation got me a hell of a lot further with my dissertation (weird, huh?).
I've been feeling much more comfortable and more like a real third year recently (I've never really bothered with the whole working-on-degree-for-most-of-the-day thing while I've been at Uni, and it's the only thing that seems to make third year work.) So, all good, I'm in good habits of working from 8:30am-6pm on the science site, at least most days.
I've still got a heck of a lot to do (prepare for meeting my supervisor on Thursday, do the programming of the dissertation, write up my project management blogs, sort out my graphics coursework, do the parallel computing exercises (when they are set next week), do the write-up of the dissertation, and some random stuff for May), but it all feels more doable. On the other hand, if I get bad marks (read below 55%) on the stuff I've just done, this will all fall apart again, it's very fragile until I get these marks.

OmniGroup are pissing me off. They've written a great bit of project management software for OS X, called OmniPlan. I started using a demo (capped at 20 items) back at the start of January, to plan out my dissertation project. We need to do this kind of thing for write ups, so I decided to do it in such a way that it would be useful.
I was so impressed that I decided to buy it (educational licence - $90, £45.30 - I'm loving the exchange rate at the moment!). Here's where the saga starts: I don't have a credit card, only debit, so, I look for a UK distributor. I find one, Nova, and try to buy it from their online store. The store was broken, so I emailed them, and found that they didn't have the serials yet. Fair play, Omniplan was only released days earlier, so it's understandable. Guy from Nova emailed omni direct, and asked them when they could be expected. 8-10 nagging emails later, we've still got nowhere. Guy has asked them to send me a serial direct, which is good of him given I've not paid yet, but they still haven't done anything. I should really show my plan to my dissertation supervisor on Thursday, and if I can't do that with omniPlan I'm going to have to do excel hackery, and I really don't want to. It's just so strange that they're being so awkward about selling me their product, it's a really weird business model!
Anyway, end of rant. With any luck, the serial will come through tomorrow, but I don't know.

Well, I've finally moved into my flat up here - it's not quite done yet, but there's just snagging (and the exec office) to do really, so not such a problem. I don't have much furnature yet, and most of what I do have is in bits (I've not found my envelopes full of screws and the other misc. that holds the furnitre together yet...) but I have a clothes rail, chest of drawers and a bed, so it'll be fine for a few days.

The common room at St. Margaret's is pretty much done, and we're aiming to open on Wednesday. Katie, Felix and I had a trip to IKEA yesterday to buy sofas, chairs and tables, and the pool table, jukebox, till and safe should be arriving this week - it's all falling into place...

The fresh are descending tommorrow, including Dominie, which will be good, if hectic... it's going to be a busy couple of weeks, but should be a lot of fun... my second freshers' week!

Besides that, for those of you that didn't know, I passed my resits (otherwise probably wouldn't be here...) and so I'm on track for this year. My timetable is amazing - I've got all of Wednesday, all of Friday, Tuesday afternoon, and Thursday afternoon all off, it's fab!

Anyway, I hope you're all well and ready for the start of a new (probably my last) academic year, and I'll see you soon.
J

So, I've moved. We got to the new house in Guildford last Friday, and we're mostly moved in. There's a lot to still unpack, but there we are, I think there always will be, since we're in a smaller house and we have far too much stuff. I've also lost my phone charger in the packing, so if you're trying to get in touch, that's why you can't. It's all a bit Surrey, and all a bit meh, and I have no money and am bored. w00t.

My timetable for next year is looking fab. 10 hours a week, Monday mornings off, Thursday afternoons off, and Wednesdays and Fridays off! There's lots to do in the big gaps, but still. That's also assuming that the University tell me I can come back (a week today... :S )

I'm 21 on Friday. I'm not going to do much on the day (trip to London with V, which will be nice) but I'll have some kind of celebration when I get back to Durham at some point.

Anyway, hope you're all well
Josh

So... it appears we're moving to Guildford. Or a little bit outside it anyway, a place called Merrow. Map it up...
We're moving on the 1st of September, selling our Leicester house, renting in Merrow for a couple of months while we look for something to buy, and both parents look for jobs. Madness.
The house we're renting comes with a cat called tiger(!) which is very exciting, since I've been wanting a cat quite a lot recently. We're renting from a random Christian family who are basically taking a gap year to go do mission work, so they want the house back in 10 months or so, and it's their cat.
Yeah, would have prefered Edinburgh a lot, but it'll be nice to be closer to London I suppose (40 mins on the train to Waterloo, £6.85 return), and useful in a year's time when I'll almost certainly be looking for work there, but I would have preferred Edinburgh. Not that it's really got anything to do with me - I've been at home for about 6 weeks in the last year and a half. Maybe a little more, but not much.
Revision is turning my brain to mush, and I'm very very worried about failing things - I don't really want to have to start a degree as a first year or anything like that, if I was even allowed to. :-/. Note to self: pass resit exams.

Anyway, back to work, hope you're all OK

Since Skype deigned to include proxy support with the OS X version of their client, I've started using it (ish).

Anyway,

It seems a little odd to post this on LJ, and I've flocked it from anyone who actually knows them so that they get the fun of surprising people made it public now, but I'm going to post it anyway -
Congratulations Kieran and Lucy!
All very exciting and cool.

I might even update properly sometime, but there's not a huge amount to say.

Got y'all in here.

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

× I miss somebody right now.	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.	✓ I own lots of books.  (...that's right, all the books.)
✓ I wear glasses or contact lenses.  (when I can be arsed.§89)	✓ I love to play video games.  (sometimes.)	✓ I've tried marijuana.  (twice)
✓ I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.  (I don't think so, but that depends on definition.)	✓ I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.	✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.	× I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.  (erm... what?)

( it goes on... )

So, about 6 hours until freedom from exams ... this makes me very happy

:-D <--[my happy face]

Some of them went well, some not-so-well, but there haven't been any nasty suprises (yet!) so that's a good thing.

I get to have a life again soon! wooo!

:-)

So, exams: discuss.

Hey flist.
Life is good. Revision is rubbish, but I think I'll pass everything... and that's what matters!
Life is good despite revision crisis, which emphasises just how good everything else is.
Also, be proud, I resisted people's efforts to get me to hound. The willpower, it's amazing.
Yes, I have had lots of Pimmds.
And hen.
Woot

Raining.

Bye!

I'm working the bar tonight (for the first time) so if anyone wants to come down, that would be cool. :-)|

...we love klute, and we love really really drunk Tim. The entertainment!!

mmmm.... brownies... so good!!!

So, I just realised that it's been about 3 weeks since I took the liberty of boring you all with an update. You must have missed it.

I'm back in Leicester now (I got back yesterday) and now I have clean clothes (yay!) and a desk to work at, and all kinds of (not-so-)exciting things. Go me.

Also, have booked my exec's weekend away - we're going to Edinburgh in the first weekend of term (28-30th)

Been working on various JCR things, and probably not enough on revision, but I've done some. Just should really have done lots.

We're going to Brussels somewhen (not sure just when yet. Probably for Easter weekend) as long as my passport arrives soon (no, I didn't forget it even though I left it ready to pack on my desk. that's just crazy talk.

Yeah, I can't really be bothered to write this right now. Something tells me it shows.

Pubbage with schooly people tonight, yay!

Have fun all!