Just a test, first posting!

Just a test, first posting! Music I'm listening to: the soundtrack from Leon. This weekend I watched the films "The Birds" and "Amélie". Enough for now, methinks :)

Cheating sleep

So, I woke up this morning...

Actually, that should read, 'was rudely woken up by my damn radio alarm'. Every Monday morning it's the same thing: disbelief. The weekend couldn't have gone that quickly, could it? My problem is that I am a heavy sleeper and having to get up at 7am does shocking things to my state of awakeness during the week. So any chance I get, I just sleep on and on - I can't remember the last time I woke up naturally rather than being woken up by something or someone. (This is one of the good side-effects of being a heavy sleeper; no waking up at 3am and not being able to go back to sleep.) At the weekends I'll sleep until ten or eleven o'clock, result, I have a 12-hour day which means I can't get to sleep, especially on a Sunday. So inevitably, on Monday mornings I'll have had about 6 hours sleep with which to revitalise myself.

My solution? To fool myself into thinking that I get a lie-in. And how do you do that, I hear you ask, when you arise at such an ungodly hour? Simple. I set my alarm for 6.30am, struggle out of bed and into the bathroom, then back to bed for half an hour and get up just as the 7 o'clock news finishes. This may sound mad, but if I wake up at 7.00 and have to leap out of bed and immediately get ready, I just won't be able to do it. I won't even be able to read the paper at breakfast. Whereas this way, firstly, I have an incentive to get up (because the sooner I get up, the sooner I can go back to bed), and secondly, I'm just awake enough to actually get up when my second alarm clock goes off.

So there you go; bent back tulips can solve that age-old problem of how to get out of bed. And you thought I did nothing for you...

Book habits

Today, class, we're going to talk about books...

I've always been a fast reader, although over the past couple of years I've found this to be a disadvantage in two ways: firstly, I run out of books to read (which is one reason that I reread all my books!), and secondly, I seem to read books too quickly. Reading 150 pages in one sitting can really distort the time frame of the book, and it feels a bit rushed. I don't have time to properly get inside the characters' heads or to fully comprehend what's happening on a fundamental level, which can be a problem when it's the first time of reading.

My realisation of this trait of mine was triggered by a reading of Gone With The Wind, my favourite book. I first read it when I was eleven, and since then I've read it 15 times. (In six years, if anyone's counting.) A few years ago I read it in six days. On average, that's 180 pages and 2 years in the book's time span per day. And it's not as if I was making an effort to zoom through it - this was during term time! It felt very rushed and didn't really make an impact on me like it usually does, which could also have been due to the fact that I'd read it less than six months previously. Since then, I make myself take a long time when I read books (or at least, stop myself from reading more than 100 pages per day), and I'm only allowed to read Gone With The Wind once a year... another 7 months to go then!

However, this has led to me reading different books simultaneously - yesterday I was reading five, but I finished one of them (thank goodness!). This ensures that for any particular book I won't have finished it with the plot flying past me, and it also lets me have one book in my bag for the school coach and a few on my bedside table (nightstand) which I can choose between, depending on how tired I am.

I have no idea how many books I read over any given time period - I'd guess at about 50 in a year, but really I don't know. In junior school I remember a chart on the classroom wall with all our names on, and whenever we finished reading a book we woud have to bring it in (for proof) and then we'd get a sticker to put next to our name on the chart. Other people (according to the chart, anyway) got up to twenty books, I think. Being the lazy little sod that I was, I apparently read two books over the whole school year (when in fact it must have been at least ten times that number).

I remembered this earlier this year, and started keeping a spreadsheet of which books I was reading and when I started and finished them. So far, in 22 weeks I've read 39 books, although this has been skewed somewhat by the inclusion of my two-week summer holiday, when I read 13 books (including the 1100-page Gone With The Wind and two 600-page volumes). And I actually have another 39 books on my 'to read' list (not including the three that I'm currently reading). So, that should keep me going until the summer holidays at least :)

Open day

I went to an open day at Warwick University yesterday - although it was an open day for people who've already received UCAS offers from Warwick, rather than an open day designed to convince you to apply there. The whole day was, predictably, fairly tiring, with a total of five hours in the car. And it was bloody cold walking round the campus! A long way to walk, too, since it's the biggest campus university in the UK.

I've now had offers from five out of my six university choices, which I'm pleased about. The one that's still forthcoming (hopefully!) is from Royal Holloway, which was the only university to ask for an interview (informal). I'm applying for Physics with Computer Science and had an interview with both departments, which went well, although the physics tutor asked me to sketch the graph of y = xe^-x. Think you could? My maths teachers were struggling with it, which at least makes me feel better :) For those Not In The Know, my A-levels are Physics, Maths and Further Maths (oh, interesting green colour on your face there), and I have an A/S level in French from last year.

And (on a related topic) sooo much holiday homework! I know that it's the Upper Sixth form and we have to do lots of work - I do do lots of work, but at school rather than at home. This is possible because of the copious number of free periods[1] that I have in my week, for the following reasons: a) the further maths course only takes up one and a half blocks of lessons although it is two A-levels. b) I'm doing three A-levels instead of four, so that removes another block of lessons. c) I took French last year, so I don't have to go to catch-up lessons for General Studies (which requires you to take a modern language paper). Result: I have eighteen, count 'em, eighteen free perstudy periods per week. This means that I've now got into the habit of doing all my work at school and just collapsing when I get home. I'm not used to doing work at home, dammit! And now I have to do:

• the final and complete Plan (note capital P) for my physics coursework project
• collect all the data for my statistics S3 project
• two statistics papers, one for each module we're sitting in the summer
• a P4 pure (further maths) paper
• stacks and stacks of P5 and P6 pure further maths questions.

And I'm sure there's more to come.

[1] - "It's not a free period, it's a study period!" Movie quote - points for identification (and maybe a cookie :)

Exhaustion and films

The end of the school term approaches at a snail's pace, even though we break up on Tuesday. It's just as well we don't have to do a whole week because I really think I might collapse if I had to do with 6 hours' sleep a night all of next week as well. My mental collapse happened yesterday (although I think it could have been triggered by all that travelling on Tuesday) - I couldn't move quickly, even to write, I could not think much at all (except for 'I want to go to sleep' hammering against my skull). I was just completely wiped out. Now, I know I'm tired all the time during the school term, but this was far beyond tiredness into absolute exhaustion, a state which I don't think I've ever experienced before. It's better today though - I managed a whole eight hours' sleep last night!

Anyway... all this tiredness (and setting up this blog, of course!) means that I haven't been watching much television. Which is bad because, having very belatedly discovered Buffy The Vampire Slayer a couple of months ago in the middle of Season 2, I've been borrowing all the videos from my very Buffy-obsessed friend. I worked my way through the third series (amazing!) and I've now started at the beginning. The contrast in quality is incredible, I have to say! Not only do I have all of those to watch, I have a huge pile of films mounting up that I've been taping (or buying at Virgin Megastores for '3 for £15'...). At this moment, I have to watch:

• High Noon (1952)
• The Wrong Man (1956)
• The Blue Dahlia (1946)
• Marnie (1964)
• Apocalyspe Now Redux (1979)
• Magnolia (1999)
• Primal Fear (1996)
• Duel (1976)
• A.I. (2001)
• The Phantom Menace (1998)
• another two Buffy videos

And I see that A Fistful Of Dollars is on at the weekend as well. Not to mention everything on the Christmas schedule coming soon...

I've only become a bit of a films fan in the last year, after Channel 4's 100 Greatest Films program that they did. Before that, I had thought I was reasonably well-versed in films (mixed metaphor, I know) but I was stunned at how many excellent films I hadn't seen, or even heard of. Out of the top 10 (which was actually twelve - The Godfather parts I and II were one entry, as were Star Wars: Episodes IV and VI) I had seen a total of none. Since then, I've been much more interested in films, and my favourite films are:

• Vertigo (1958)
• Dr Strangelove (1964)
• The Godfather (1972)
• The Godfather Part II(1974)
• The Sting (1973)
• Dead Poets Society (1981)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1993)
• Leon (1994)
• The Usual Suspects (1995)
• Twelve Monkeys (1995)
• Ransom (1996)
• American Beauty (1999)
• Memento (2000)
• Moulin Rouge (2001)
• Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)

The only criterion for a film being in this list is whether I would say of it, "That's one of my favourite films..." There are some excellent films that I love, but they don't make it into the list, eg. Pleasantville, Jaws and Dog Day Afternoon.

Note that the above films aren't ranked in order of preference because I find it extremely difficult to rate any of them against each other, partially because I don't know whether to rate them for enjoyment value or the objective 'which is the best film?' I'd feel guilty if, eg, I ranked Moulin Rouge above The Shawshank Redemption. TSR is undoubtedly a better film, but I get more enjoyment out of watching MR. And as for The Usual Suspects...

A couple of weeks before my birthday in September, my brother was browsing on Amazon and I was, predictably, waiting for him to relinquish the computer. I saw they were selling the two-disc second edition DVD of The Usual Suspects for £7.99, so I asked him to buy me that as a present. At that point I knew next to nothing about the film - I knew that Kevin Spacey was in it and I knew that it had been compared to Memento in terms of a twist ending. So that's how much knowledge I approached it with when I sat down to watch it.

In the first 9 weeks of owning the DVD I watched it five times - technically at least; two of those were listening to the audio commentaries on the DVD, so I've seen it properly three times - actually, slightly more than that, because after the first time I saw it, I went through only watching the interrogation bits. And strangely I haven't got sick of it yet :)

That's all, folks.

Unique Christmas pressie

I was off school yesterday for the first time in two years - not through illness as such, but just from sheer exhaustion. I was able to sleep 5 hours more than I would have done if I'd gone to school, and consequently felt much better than I have done all week. I didn't miss much at school anyway, I had two single lessons of pure maths and nothing else (it's my free afternoon, so I'd come home at lunchtime anyway).

I need to go out later to try and finish my Christmas shopping that I tried to start last week, but no luck - I became distracted by all the nice books and videos and things, ended up just buying things for myself! No matter... I've only managed to buy things for two people so far. The rest I'll have to do in the next week, when it'll be abolutely hectic in all the shops :(. I must, however, get something for the friend who I'm seeing The Two Towers with on Wednesday[1]. I have a brilliant pressie for my brother though, which I'll explain below.

A couple of weeks ago my driving instructor was regaling me with his celeb tales ["I sold the Spice Girls their Rolexs, and sold Ronnie Corbett his as well, oh, and Liam Neeson, and I live next door to Valerie Singleton, and I taught Alan Rickman's kids to drive.."]. He heard that my brother is a huge F1 fan - show him any two-second clip of any Grand Prix from about 1990 onwards and he'll be able to tell you which race it was and which year, who won, etc. So my driving instructor told me that when he worked in the jewellery business they set up a promotional thing between his company and Tag Heuer, who do the timing devices for some F1 cars. As part of this promotion, he had David Coulthard's car in his shop for two weeks (and I've seen the photos!). He also got passes to the British Grand Prix with full VIP access (pit lane, meals with the crew) and a free Tag Heuer hat, which he got David Coulthard to sign after he won the race. Pretty impressive, no?

The hat's sitting in my desk drawer waiting to be wrapped up as a Christmas pressie for my brother - my driving instructor isn't really an F1 fan, he only went to the Grand Prix because they were free tickets. I should probably get him a big present as well!

Driving-wise, my instructor says that I should easily be able to take my driving test in January. Yay(!), but a little daunting seeing as I've only had 12 lessons so far. I'm doing well though, generally, although in the mock driving test that I took today I only just scraped a pass. Must work on that. Oh well, I'll have plenty of time next week.

Other news - when I was applying to universities, I applied for a deferred entry so that I could have a gap year, during which I intend to gain some work experience working for a company's IT department or suchlike. I've applied to IBM's pre-university employment scheme and the Year In Industry scheme. IBM's website says they don't expect applications until the spring, so that'd be why they haven't replied to me since I applied in October. YinI, on the other hand...

Filling in the application you have to state which region of the country you are in [South], whether you're willing to live away from home [no], which university course you have applied for [Physics with Computer Science] and which is your area of interest [Information Technology]. I filled it in[2], sent it off, was summoned for an informal preliminary interview, which is just to check through your application form with you and make sure it's repesenting your intentions accurately. Apparently mine wasn't, as the man who was going through it with me started talking about all the physics research placements that they have on offer. I interrupted him and explained that I'd prefer to work in the IT sector, as indicated on my form. He stops.

Him: "But you're doing a Physics degree."
Me: "My preferred course would have been Computer Science with Physics (Comp Sci as the major subject), but none of the universities offer that, so I've had to opt for Physics with Computer Science instead. But I'd still prefer a placement within the IT industry."
Him: "Right..." pause "Where is that coming across on your form?"
Me: pointing "Under 'Area of interest', it says 'Information Technology'."
Him: "Yes, but I don't think that's very clear, really, do you? I think that, when you return this form to us to officially apply to the scheme, you'd better state clearly on your covering letter that you want to work in IT."

My covering letter reads: 'Please could it be noted that I would prefer a placement relating to Information Technology as opposed to a Physics-based placement, as indicated under the ?Area of Interest? section of the form. I trust that my form will be forwarded to the relevant companies.'

The next week I got a note asking me to call someone to arrange an interview with a company. I had to turn it down because (a) it was in Farnborough, which would take about 2 hours to get to every morning, and (b) it was a physics research placement. I get the impression that they're a little annoyed with me because apparently that's one of their top placements and I didn't even bother to go for an interview. I had another letter this week, saying: 'You are registered with The Year in Industry for a placement starting in September 2003, and indicated you may be prepared to move away from home for a good placement'...

Um, no, I didn't. And guess what, it's another physics reseach placement. They seem to have completely ignored my form and the extra letter that I sent. They just don't want to believe that I actually want to work in the computer industry ["Oh, she's doing Physics at university. This must be a mistake, she must want a physics placement.."]

I hope IBM come up trumps, else I think I might be stuck.

Googlewhacking and singing

Since Saturday I've mainly been wrangling with blogger, trying to enable visitor commenting on my posts. The system that's installed at the moment is not working insofar as I can't see the 'comment' link at all on either IE6 or Opera - although I can at school, with IE5.5. I see someone's left me a comment though - someone else with IE5.5? On a similar note, you can now email me by clicking on my name at the bottom of each post.

For those who haven't heard of Googlewhacking, it is the seemingly pointless objective of typing two words into a Google search (no quote marks) and coming up with one single search result. Do not underestimate the awesome power of Googlewhacking - it's ridiculously addictive! Here's an Auto-whacker - it will check the results for you and also validate your words via Dictionary.com (did you know that 'xyzzy' is listed as a word?). My contributions - 'rabid quaggas', 'chromatinic psychokinetic', 'naiadales prognosis' and 'proton gnomons'.

No, I'm not telling you how long I spent finding those. :P

Last night was the second carol concert organised by our school (the first one was a bit earlier - on the 5th December). And because it's a girls' choir, there seems to be an assumption that all of us can do all the really high descants. I sing the bottom of four parts (2nd alto) and it's been years since I could sing anything above a top-of-the-stave E^b comfortably, let alone a high G! Result is that I have to mime to half of it, and just join in the bits that won't result in me squeaking foolishly and distracting people around me trying to sing. I wouldn't mind so much if we could just do some decent lower harmonies, I mean, that's why I chose to sing a lower part! I'd love to do the lower harmony for 'O little town of Bethlehem', or 'Silent Night', or 'Once in royal David's city'... I do like the high descants[1] - especially the one for Silent Night, which I haven't sung for... five years now - but I can't sing them!

My driving lesson today went better than last weekend's - I nailed the reverse-around-a-corner (and a curved corner at that!) manoeuvre twice in a row. Apart from the observation, that is. *cough* I'm still in a good mood though, because we broke up at lunchtime today :)

Only another 20 hours until the trailers preceding The Two Towers start in the cinema... (excited? me?)

The Two Towers

It turns out that I managed to buy two books for my friend (as a Christmas present) that she'd already read. That takes some talent, doesn't it?

Psycho was on television last night, which I've never seen. So I was planning on taping it to watch later, except that I eventually decided not to. Why? Every single mini-review of it in the television schedules gave away the identity of the serial killer, and one (from the looks of it) gave a run-down of the entire plot. Now, I know it's a 42-year old film, but some of us haven't seen it yet! Of course, I probably shouldn't have been skimming the write-ups, but I really didn't expect that much of a spoiler with no warning, especially for a film that (so far as I can tell) relies so strongly on plot that its director banned people from entering the cinemas once the film had started. Grr.

Speaking of spoilers, I saw The Two Towers yesterday....HUGE SPOILERS UPCOMING

s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s

Wow. Oh, my god. Amazing!

And yes, there were a few things that I didn't like - how far they diverted from the book plot-wise (and even character-wise), the use of Arwen-flashbacks when Aragorn and Éowyn were walking to Helm's Deep, etc. But overall, it was stunning, although not quite as much as Fellowship was.

The Ents were fantastic - so much better than I thought they'd be, in terms of appearance, although the eyes seemed a bit too CGI at times. The visual of the Ents storming Isengard is one that's going to stay with me for a long time, I think. I liked the extremely long conversation that they had, and Treebeard's explanation that it takes a very long time to say anything in Old Entish. However, that was the perfect cue to introduce Quickbeam, which they didn't (another disappointment).

I quite liked the way they introduced the film, starting with the slight recap of Khazad-Dûm (including, unfortunately, that appalling slow-mo shot of Frodo yelling "No-o-o-o-o-o...") and showed Gandalf's resurrection, although I was concerned at the beginning over whether there was going to be a long flashback sequence ["Previously, on Lord of the Rings..."] I expect the lack of backstory explanation could have been disorientating for newcomers, who wouldn't have had a clue what was happening. Well, be warned - buy Fellowship (book or film) before you see TTT.

Characters - I found Aragorn much less annoying in this film, possibly because he didn't slip into an American accent nearly so often as in the first film. His leadership qualities are really starting to show through nicely. Merry was another character who began to show some development, although I can barely see the point of doing this if Peter Jackson's not going to include the Scouring of the Shire *hmph*. That chapter just caps it all off beautifully, and at the moment is the most heinous plot-change from the books, in my opinion. This is strange, but I'd say that the best acting performance in the film is from Gollum, who is absolutely fantastic. It's nice to see that they kept some of his humorous lines as well. It almost makes up for the complete joke that is Gimli in these films. I had hoped that they would actually do something with him in TTT, and I was prepared to forgive them for completely stereotyping him in Fellowship. However. During the course of this three hour long film I didn't see more than two of his lines that were anything other than cheap comedy moments. Talk about character assassination...

Plot changes - obviously there's Faramir, who seems to be distincly unnoble as opposed to his character in the book. However, the main point about his character still comes across well - that, once he realises the corrupting power of the ring, he relinquishes it and releases Frodo, which his brother Boromir could not do. It's just a shame PJ took so long to make that point, considering the mammoth amount of material that was left out of the film (everything after the Ents storming Isengard and after Frodo and Sam parting from Faramir's company) which will have to be covered in Return of the King. The elves joining Theoden's men at Helm's Deep I didn't mind so much as it's not exactly a hugely significant departure from the books. And I'm waiting to see why they had Aragorn breaking up with Arwen and leaving her to depart for the Grey Havens - please, not a tearful reunion à la Hollywood, showing that Love^TM Triumphs Over Death... that point was made more subtly in the book. The really unnecessary plot change was, I felt, Aragorn's fall over the cliff and consequent presumed death. Actually I thought it was going to be cheesier than it was - I could just see the long silence while Legolas et al walk to the edge of the cliff, see nothing, turn away - only for Aragorn to do an Indiana Jones and you see the visual of his hand just coming over the cliff as he climbs back. *shudder* This episode was an example of the over-dramaticness which is evident in these two films and which I feel is unnecessary. The other example of this is:

Pippin: "The White Wizard?"
Merry: "Saruman!"
noise behind them. They turn around to look at what we see is a white, wizardly figure, when...
CUT TO NEXT SCENE

For goodness' sake!

Little things (apart from Quickbeam's non-appearance) - Frodo and Sam didn't notice Gollum's dual personality, and so we didn't get the Slinker/Stinker nicknames, which I've always loved. I did like the way that Sméagol/Gollum was dealt with, particularly at the end when Gollum convinces Sméagol to lead Frodo and Sam to Shelob, which was left hanging beautifully, in my opinion. Faramir looks surprisingly like both Boromir (his brother) and Aragorn (with whom he shares Numenorian blood). Sam talking about the songs that there'll be about "Frodo and the Ring", which brought a smile to my face. And - aha! Evadne's wonderful FOTR film parody contains the line: 'FRODO laughs. It would behoove the AUDIENCE to remember this sound, as they will never hear it again.' He did! (if my memory isn't playing up). Just the once, but still...

There weren't too many cringeingly bad lines in this film - apart from "Looks like meat is back on the menu, boys!" *shudder* And there was another mention of "manflesh". The second dwarf-tossing line I felt actually partially redeemed the first one (in FOTR - "Nobody tosses a dwarf!").

The pacing was okay, but felt a little awkward flitting between Frodo, Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn. I think that was inevitable though, given that the stories weren't originally structured that way. The biggest disadvantage of this, though, was that there were at least three separate scenes where Merry and Pippin were just being carried by Treebeard, and given the time spans of the other storylines running parallel, it seemed like they spent days just being carried by the Ent.

Two of the best bits - Sam's Oliphaunts were wonderful, even if he didn't get to recite his poem [Is it "Big as a house / Grey as a mouse"? From memory]. And 'Legolas getting on a horse' was fantastic. I loved the fact that they didn't make a big deal of it, it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.

And the absolute best part - the battle of Helm's Deep. I'm still stunned at just how amazing it was. I was expecting it to be the most impressive section of the film, but not necessarily my favourite. So much for that expectation! I just can't do it justice here in my words, but it was incredible - I had shivers running down my back quite a lot during this section. Just a couple of small points about it though - I'm glad they included Legolas and Gimli's tallies; I've always liked that part! And yes, that was Legolas snowboarding down the stairs on a shield. Enough said.

More VSDs

How can it be Christmas Eve tomorrow? I still haven't wrapped my presents!

I saw The Two Towers again today, and I liked it even more - although I was wrong; Frodo doesn't laugh again, he only smiles. Oh well :) On a related note, Cassie Claire's started writing more Very Secret Diaries for this film. I still crack up when I think of her first ones...

On Saturday my driving instructor said, "So, let's go somewhere exciting today. How about.... Heathrow Airport?"

gulp doesn't quite cover it.

Still not king

Christmas Day good.
Boxing Day bad as I was ill and only got up three hours before I went to bed.
Nice presents and Christmas lunch and everything.

Still tired. More later.

Christmas Tales

So anyway, Christmas...

Family came round - one uncle, one aunt and two cousins - which meant that I had to spend Christmas night on a mattress in my parents' room. Come on, sympathy needed! For the last few years with the family coming round on Christmas Day we've been opening presents on Christmas Eve, which I used to find sort of anti-climactic but now I appreciate it since, not only do I get to open my presents early, but it leaves Christmas Day free from all of that and means we can concentrate on family-type stuff. So we had the obligatory huge Christmas lunch (turkey, ham, all the trimmings) and subsided gently onto sofas in the evening to watch my extended edition of Fellowship Of The Ring, which occupied us for the next three and a half hours! And I now have a really, really long list of books to read, which now looks like this (in no particular order):

• Foundation - Isaac Asimov
• Look To Windward - Iain M. Banks
• Coraline - Neil Gaiman
• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
• The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
• The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
• 253 - Geoff Ryman
• Spellsinger - Alan Dean Foster
• The Silmarillion - JRR Tolkien
• Dune - Frank Herbert
• Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
• The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
• American Gods - Neil Gaiman
• The Dispossessed - Ursula le Guin
• Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
• House Of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
• The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
• The Beach - Alex Garland
• The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart
• The Quantity Theory Of Insanity - Will Self
• Jingo - Terry Pratchett
• Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett
• The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett
• The Truth - Terry Pratchett
• Thief Of Time - Terry Pratchett
• Night Watch - Terry Pratchett

Should keep me going for a few months at least :)

And as I said, I was ill on Boxing Day and got up at 7.30 in time for dinner. Consequently I've been sleeping at odd hours ever since, which means that last night I really couldn't get to sleep. So I got up at 4am and watched one of the DVD audio commentaries for FOTR. Went back to bed at about 8am, got up three hours later. Bleurgh.

The gap year job-hunting saga goes on... it turns out that Year in Industry haven't deleted me from their database after I turned down one of their top (physics) placements without an interview, and have even amended their database to show that I'm looking for an IT placement rather than a physics one; I was offered an interview for a job with HTA Architects Ltd in London, working for their IT director. Yay! The interview's going to be scheduled for the end of January sometime, so if I get the job then my life's going to be sorted for the next four years. Scary...

And congrats to my friend Missiedith, who got into Oxford University to study Maths and Computer Science! Yay her!

Links:

• the Very Secret Diary of Théoden has now been written
• Here's a nice little Dialectizer - click to see this page in redneck, jive, and cockney dialect...