Greetings

Thanks to my recent acquisition of the Evanescence album - and incidentally, I bet they won't get illegally downloaded that much because of the difficulty in spelling their name - out of the 1000ish songs on my Winamp playlist I now have two called "Hello", one called "Hello, Goodbye", one called "Say Hello Wave Goodbye", and two called "Goodbye". (There's also "See You Soon" or "Good Riddance" as followups to the last two.)

A lot of comings and goings, seemingly.

Holiday reading results

Yes, here it is, what you've all been waiting for after the four weeks of build-up to this momentous, uh, moment - the results of the Choose experiment whereby I allowed total strangers to decide my holiday reading material for me. They came, they voted, they recommended more books, they have already cost me money through buying recommended books...

As the votes came in, it quickly transpired that a more sophisticated voting system was required than originally planned. So unbeknownst to all but myself, you the voters have given a book one vote if you mentioned it and two votes if you seemed really enthusiastic about it. And one enterprising soul asked to give a negative vote to Animal Farm, a request which was duly granted. Not that it actually made any difference to the final result :)

*drumroll*

Books with seven votes: Good Omens
Books with five votes: Wuthering Heights, Animal Farm
Books with four votes: Fahrenheit 451, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
Books with three votes: The Illustrated Man, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Secret History, Great Expectations, Of Mice And Men, Jane Eyre, Hitchhiker's.

(If you've read through all the comments on the original post and are wondering why the votes for Wuthering Heights, Animal Farm, Great Expectations and Jane Eyre don't seem to add up, some votes were left in a comment to a different post, presumably to throw me off the scent in some way...)

That's twelve books, which ought to be manageable. However, given that I'm also taking Gone With The Wind, Fight Club and Inversions (which I'm unlikely to finish before the weekend) I'll strike Hitchhiker's off the list since I read them all this time last year. Thus leaving fourteen in total, which should last me until I get back... if not then I'm going to have to buy more Terry Pratchett novels in French and read those instead ;)

Gone

I'm off! And very excited... or rather, I would be if I could actually think right now - getting up this early is very bad for me. Very very bad for my system.

And no sarcastic comments of, "And yet you still found time at 5am to turn on the computer and write a final blog entry?" because believe me, I appreciate the picture this paints, okay?

As we were loading up the car yesterday with all our packing the front door blew shut. It's one of those doors that you can't open from the outside without a key, so we all turned to each other inquisitively to determine which one of us had taken the front door key with them in case the door blew shut.

Go on, guess.

In the end my dad climbed over the side gate with the aid of a ladder - it's a 6-foot gate with a brick arch over the top of it - since luckily we'd left the back door open. Disaster averted :)

I'm not quite going to be 100% computer-free for the next two weeks because I am being an idiot and taking my old laptop along with Mandrake Linux installation CDs and instructions. This is clearly a huge mistake, since when it all goes horribly wrong I won't be able to email anyone to argle at them, but it'll at least provide me with something else to do on rainy days should I ever get bored (gasp!) of reading.

Anyway. Coastal France, here I come :)

The traveller returns

Well. That was nice :)

We drove around our area of Brittany quite a lot, looking at bits of coast and headlands. The one touristy place that we went to was Mont St-Michel which is a little abbey built on an islet in the eighth century (destroyed and then rebuilt in the thirteenth century - but it's still the same abbey, you understand) and nowadays is one of France's big tourist attractions and to this end is packed full of shops selling crappy souvenirs and refreshments. We battled our way through the crowds up the single narrow cobbled street and found, when we reached the building itself, that we were expected to pay to enter and climb to the top. Seeing as we'd already paid to get into the car park, and that we wouldn't attain much of a view in any case since the air wasn't very clear, we decided to just stand around and admire the view from where we were. No photographs of the beautiful landscape, but there's a nice one floating around of the Mont St-Michel car park, reaching off into the hazy distance.

In all the two weeks I spent rather a lot of time stretched out in front of beautiful patches of seaside, enjoying the sun and reading. We had gorgeous weather most of the time, although there were a few days of rain and storms (apparently one night there was a thunderstorm so incredibly loud that the walls of our gîte shook on several occasions. My window was open. I never once woke up), and the only annoying thing about sitting outside was the presence of some tiny black bugs which turned up everywhere, and constantly. Every few minutes you could look down and there'd be yet another one crawling on your arm or your leg, and one day I noticed a couple of rather motionless bugs inside the LCD screen of my MP3 player. They have since vanished, although one did make a brief reappearance the other day in the middle of the screen. I just hope this doesn't mean they're actually crawling around inside the entire player and finding things to eat in there. The bug that ended up inside my laptop monitor was rather more irritating since it actually was crawling around. It survived for two days and then (presumably) died somewhere offscreen.

Yes, the laptop. I forswore computers and then promptly packed my laptop, Mandrake Linux CDs and instructions, and print-outs of three emails I received the day before I left so that I could reply to them. To serve me right for such an act, the Mandrake CDs wouldn't run at all (which is possibly something to do with my having only 16MB RAM instead of the required 32MB or recommended 64MB) and I only got around to doing just less than one email.

On a similar subject, I only succumbed once to the temptation of an internet café, although this fact sounds a little less impressive when I mention that it was the one and only day that we were in a town. However, I was only there for half an hour, and spent ten minutes of that writing a very short email; I had to unlearn touch typing so that I could actually use the AZERTY keyboard. Commas where the M should be, A and W down the bottom, having to use Shift to type a number or even a full stop... Thoroughly frustrating. And rather expensive as well, which meant that I rediscovered what it is to quickly browse blogs under time constraints. I couldn't even think about reading linky blogs or blogs with a habit of leaning towards essays, because I wouldn't have had time to look through all the links or to read leisurely through all the long posts. Almost like being on per-minute dial-up :)

The nearest town had a small harbour with a lighthouse on the end of a pier and a tendency towards very picturesque sunsets as evidenced herein. And we walked around, drove around, wined and dined (including a proper Breton gallette because, dammit, you have to in these circumstances) and pretty soon the whole two weeks had gone and we were packing again.

And now I'm playing catch-up with everything and getting annoyed with monthly archives that display posts in reverse chronological order, because that makes it so much harder to read through them.

But still. I'm back.

Movin', movin', movin'

Meg, formerly of not.so.soft, is back from her hiatus break and has moved to Me(ish). Spread the word, update your links and bookmarks, and go and welcome her back.

Note to future sunburnt self

All Sunburn Peels Eventually.

No, Really, It Does.

Even When It's Ten Days Since The Skin Was Burned And There Are No Signs Of Peeling As Yet. And It's Five Days Since The Skin Changed Colour From Pink To Brown.

No, You Cannot Stave It Off By Applying Cream Every Day To The Affected Skin. It Will Still Peel. Even If It Doesn't Happen Immediately.

So Don't Get Cocky And Imagine That It Won't Peel This Time, Because It Will, Okay?

[Dammit.]

Watchmark

Early in the mornin'

[Rather disjointedly written since I'm not awake at the moment. Do not read if you severely dislike long and pointless ramblings.]

For the last four nights I've been trying to go to bed early. Ha bloody ha. The first three of those four nights the light went off between 01:00 and 02:00. Yesterday was better - I went out and so was tired when I got home, practically falling asleep at 10pm. Light out by 23:30, which is reasonable for me.

And then, tired and exhausted as I was - demonstrated by the fact that I only read one chapter before my eyes gave up on me - I tossed and turned for quite a while. No sleep forthcoming at all.

I gave up at 02:00 and wandered downstairs in the vague hope of tiring myself out some more, read Private Eye, and then remembered that I had an unwatched episode of Red Dwarf that I taped a few weeks ago.

I watched it. Still not sleepy.

Never mind, I thought, I'll start watching Six Feet Under from this week. [1]. Not the whole episode, you understand. Just until the first ads break, maybe.

And then - about one SFU episode later - I thought I'd just check my email. Astute reader, note the 'just'.

Did I mention 'ha bloody ha'?

So what else would you be doing at 05:00 other than checking your blogroll and cursing people for not being awake and writing at this insane hour? Last time I did this I ended up writing my one and only piece of fanfic from 04:00 until 07:30. [No, you can't see it. It was written under duress (for an informal competition) and is not my proudest piece of work. If you ignore the plot - actually, you don't need to because there isn't one - it's readable, and the characters are even pretty much in character, if the reader is familiar enough with them.] [Actually, I've just reread it for the first time in a year, and it's not too bad. Apart from the aforementioned non-plot and the fact that I really could have done with another 1,000 words, it's all right. Anyone want to read it? You'll have to be a Discworld fan to get it though, City Watch in particular and Men At Arms more specifically.]

And while I was cursing all you people who failed to provide me with more reading material I thought I'd try IRC for the first time ever, and now I'm quite glad I never got around to it when I was doing my A-levels - I'd have wasted an incredible number of hours on it! Whereas blogging, of course, was a wholly suitable and fruitful use of my time...

I've said before that I am not a morning person, and I am most definitely not an early-morning person. So. On what is probably the one day in the year when I might actually get to witness a sunrise, it's cloudy. Lovely.

"A Convoluted Riddle" (Discworld fanfic)

The sudden, intense silence came pounding into the ears of Sam Vimes, recently appointed Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. He frowned as he cocked his ear towards his half-open door, vaguely wondering where the usual hubbub of the open office downstairs had gone.

"Fred!" he called down. "Is there something I should know about?"

There was a pause as Sgt Colon ponderously climbed the stairs to Vimes's office. "Yes sir, I was just about to inform you sir, of this strange and mysterious note what has just arrived by carrier pigeon, sir. We've been puzzling over it sir, and we can't make head or tail of it, let alone a boat, hat, chrysanthemum, or other amusing shape, sir."

Vimes extended a hand and received a folded piece of paper which had probably been perfectly clean before having been passed from hand to grubby mitt among the relief downstairs. Curious, he opened it, and noticed that the edge felt as if it had been stuck down previously. A smaller piece fell out of the fold. It read: 'Dear Sir, I believe that this may be of assistance in connection with certain felonious events that occurred two nights ago. Sincerely, a concerned citizen.'

The larger note, however, was much more baffling.

* * *

Cpl C. W. St-J. Nobbs stirred the depths of his coffee mug with a grimy, dirt-encrusted finger. The rest of the relief watched in fascinated horror, probably wondering if someone would have to send for a doctor soon, after the coffee had been drunk.

"So," Nobby said laconically, "I reckon that note's a waste of our time. Why should we have to follow up a so-called lead like that, when we don't even know what it's talking about, let alone what it's saying? Just a practical joke, I shouldn't wonder. Some nutter with too much time on his hands."

"It was a very well-written note, Nobby," said Lance-Constable Stronginthearm.

"Well-written? Don't tell me you even understood the half of it!"

"Well, that's what I mean. That's how you can tell something's well-written, usually. I go to the Dysk theatre a few times a year to see the plays, and blowed if I understand what all them fancy speeches are about. I know it's good writing though, I don't have to understand it."

"I didn't understand it," volunteered Detritus from the corner. This was largely ignored by the assembled group. They fell gloomily to silence again, interrupted only by the sound of a woman at the front desk arguing with the dwarf on duty that she had plainly seen a grown man turn into a cat, and demanding to know what the Watch was going to do about it.

"Are you sure it wasn't a wolf, madam? We do get the odd story about men turning into wolves, but that's more usual, seeing as how there's a growing number of werewolves in the city. I could understand if—"

"It was a cat, I tell you! A great big tomcat, with one eye, giving me the most... offensive look! I pay my taxes, you know—"

The dwarf sighed. "Could I have a description please, madam..."

* * *

Captain Carrot carefully laid down the note on Vimes's desk, with a thoughtful look in his eye. "Very... enigmatic, sir."

"Thank you, Captain, for that astute observation. Any ideas?"

"A couple, sir. However, I'm not at all sure at this stage. Perhaps Constable Angua could... um, employ her special talents in the direction of this note?"

"You mean, see what she can smell on it?"

Carrot shuffled his feet, slightly uncomfortably. "Yes, sir. It may help to direct our investigations towards whoever wrote it."

"Fine, fine. I'll leave you to handle it, shall I?" Vimes turned back to his paperwork, guiltily aware of the colossal mountains that were in perpetual danger of slipping off his desk and possibly burying him if he didn't get out quickly enough.

Carrot walked out of the room, taking another look at the strangely cryptic note. It read:

Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard.
In a regal rage ran I.
Was it a cat I saw?
Too bad, I hid a boot.

No lemons, no melon.
Never odd or even.
I saw desserts, no lemons, no melon. Distressed was I.
Desserts, I stressed!

* * *

Angua slipped her clothes back on while Carrot waited politely, averting his eyes. "I did smell something strange on that note. The edges seemed as if they'd been smeared with... well, with snails." She gave him an embarrassed look. "Only it wasn't quite snails. It was slightly darker toned than that."

"Interesting. Anything else?"

"Yes - the overlying scent was of Klatchemite. Can you think of anyone who would use that?"

A suggestion of a satisfied smile flitted over Carrot's features as he stared pensively at the wall.

"I said, can you thi—"

"Thank you, Constable. You have, I hope, solved the case. At least, of who wrote this riddle. And now we can find out what on Disc it's all about."

* * *

A shadow fell across the Patrician, and he looked up from the documents in his hand. "Ah, Commander. And Captain Carrot too, I see. How good of you both to join me in the Palace Gardens. How are you both finding your new positions in the Watch?"

"Oh, fine, thanks," said Vimes, a grimace hovering momentarily over his face as he recalled how he had achieved his new rank. "My paperwork's much more interesting now. However sir, you will be pleased to know that I relish the challenge."

"Delighted, Commander. Are you perhaps seeking a further revision of the wages of the much enlarged Watch?"

"No sir. There is someone who we wish to see in connection with an investigation."

"I see. And whom do you wish to see?"

"A prisoner of yours, I think."

There was a slight pause. "Indeed?" said Vetinari, his expression becoming fixed.

"A special prisoner, sir," said Carrot, his open, honest face a meticulous study of candour. "I believe he has been receiving your hospitality since he left the Alchemists' Guild some years ago. We understand that he has some information about a crime."

The Patrician directed a piercing glance at Carrot and then at Vimes, and, evidently coming to a decision, nodded. "Very well. Follow me."

* * *

"Mr da Quirm," Vimes growled, "I'd be very much obliged if you would just tell me now what this is all about, before I arrest you for wasting valuable Watch time and resources. Do you know you've had the entire Watch house perplexed about this?"

"Dear me, I'm very sorry," said Leonard, anxiously. "I thought you were a clever lot in the Watch - I assumed that you'd be able to solve the little puzzle quite quickly. I apologise for my misconceptions."

"That's not really the issue here," said Vimes, trying not to notice, out of the corner of his eye, the Patrician's quickly concealed smile. "Why was it riddled in the first place? And how come you didn't sign it?"

"But I did sign it, Commander. Not with my name," he added, as Vimes started to protest, "but I wrote each line backwards. Surely you know that I write a lot of my notes backwards? I would have thought that would make it as clear as a signature."

"You wrote it backwards? But it's still readable - I thought that backwards writing couldn't be read properly?"

"Well, you see—" started Leonard, before Carrot interrupted him, grinning:

"Sir, Mr da Quirm still wanted the note to look intelligible - perhaps so that it didn't get taken for rubbish?"

"That's right," smiled Leonard, nodding.

"If you examine the note, sir, you'll see that each line reads the same backwards as it does forwards. That's what gave me the idea in the first place that Mr da Quirm wrote it. Also, it seemed to be tainted with Klatchemite, now, no one in their right mind would eat that, Mr Dibbler won't even put it on his sausages. So it had to be someone experimenting with inks. That confirmed it."

"Splendid!" cried Leonard. "I was using Klatchemite to achieve a particular shade of black, and also to deter dogs from eating the note. With my new ink, thousands of school children will have their homework spared from destruction! Lord Vetinari, may I congratulate you on your choice of captain for the Watch?"

"All very well," said Vimes, uncomfortably aware that as the senior officer, it should have been him taking giant leaps of logic that way, "but what does it actually mean?"

Leonard sighed. "Two nights ago I'm afraid I saw a theft taking place. Unofficial, I fancy. The man was richly dressed - hence 'drab as a fool', since the current king of Lancre used to be a fool. I realise that this may have been a little obscure, so I added the word 'regal' in the next line to give another clue. 'Aloof as a bard' simply meant that the man was being careless, not taking much notice of his surroundings."

"And did you see a cat?" enquired Vimes caustically, referring to the third line of the inventor's riddle.

Leonard hesitated. "I think so. It was hard to tell - that is why there is an element of doubt expressed in the riddle. However, I believe I saw the man change into a large cat as he made off down an alley. Perhaps I should have made that clearer-" he began, then stopped as Vimes shot him a glance of irritation. "The lemons and melon, through their colour, symbolised the gold of the jewellery that was taken. 'Never odd or even' reflected that crime in this city is neither fair or, alas, unusual."

"Don't I know it," mumbled Vimes, not quite loudly enough for Vetinari to hear.

"The word 'desserts' was, I'm afraid, a bit of a pun on 'deserter' - what with the man running off rather rapidly after the event. And the last line was merely there to emphasise the importance of the 'deserter' to the whole situation. I'm sorry to have caused you so much trouble over this, gentlemen, but as I said, I'm surprised that you needed my assis—"

"Thank you, Mr da Quirm—" started Vimes angrily, until Carrot interjected.

"I beg your pardon, Mr da Quirm, but I'm still unclear as to where this crime took place."

Leonard paused, frozen to the spot. "Where it took place?"

"Yes - which jeweller's was the man stealing from?"

The inventor stood stock still for a moment, and then gently subsided onto a chair. His face was a plethora of anxiety. "Where..."

The watchmen waited for a few moments, until it was apparent that Leonard wasn't going to move in the near future. Lord Vetinari peered at him, and then gestured in the direction of the door.

"In all the excitement, I'm afraid, it seems that Mr da Quirm has unhappily forgotten any details not mentioned in the note. However, I'm sure you fine officers of the law can work out where the incident occurred. Good day, gentlemen."

Server change

I'm reliably informed by my hosts that bentbacktulips.co.uk will be moved to a new server at around 0500 GMT Saturday morning. Depending on how long it takes for the DNS stuff to propagate, there may be some odd things happening around here, but they shouldn't last long.

Dashing all over the place

Dasher is a program that allows you to compose text using just your mouse (or similar thing that controls a cursor). On the right hand side of the screen and aligned vertically is the alphabet (capital letters, numbers and punctuation optional, with their own clearly marked sections). To select a letter, point your cursor at it and the display will zoom in beautifully, revealing another alphabet within the block of the letter you just selected. Repeat.

The zoom accelerates as you get further from the central point, and you can set the maximum speed so that it doesn't all whizz past you. The alphabet is ordered alphabetically (there's a phrase I never thought I'd have to write) but letters which you're more likely to use depending on what you've just written are given more vertical space. It uses a predicted text method which really makes it easy to write common words - you can write "tomorrow" in the same amount of time as a four-letter word - and is claimed to learn new words that you write, although I haven't checked this. Less common letters that it doesn't think you'll write next are much smaller. It's definitely harder to make spelling mistakes - earlier I tried to write "scarered" without realising, but I remember ("remember" is another word its predicted text likes) finding it more difficult to seek out the second "r".

I can't say how useful it is for people with disabilities who actually need to use it - although I would hazard a guess at 'very' - but my god, it's fun to use. When I first downloaded it I spent forty minutes absolutely enthralled, writing out snatches of song lyrics that happened to be playing in Winamp at the time. This whole post was written using it, apart from the markup, and took only half an hour. The only aid I had was writing out the order that the punctuation was displayed, which I soon remembered. Yes, of course it's slower, but it's so much more fun than simply typing away at a keyboard! I'm seeing how long it takes me before I can use it at the fastest zoom setting, at which point I shall feel a great sense of achievement and self-satisfaction.

It'd be perfect if you're tired and thinking more slowly - usually when I'm typing in that state, my fingers run faster than my brain and have a lot of sitting around and waiting for my brain to say something else.

It runs on dozens of different platforms and outputs .txt files. Download it. Go on.

This account has been suspended

Did I scare ya?

Sorry about the downtime. bent back tulips was moving servers yesterday and I found that I'd left it a bit late to change the nameservers - "This will take 24/48 hours to come into effect." Damn.

I'm going out now but there will be a blogmeet report later today after I get back. For the moment I shall point you towards the only report I can see that's surfaced yet, from Kevin.

The gathering

So I went to yesterday's blogmeet and am no longer a meet-newbie. It was fun, and now that my compulsory week-long business course in August has been cancelled, I'm going to the next blogmeet as well.

There would have been photos included with this write up, but since I was late and rushing not to miss my train, the digital camera was inadvertantly left in the car. Still, at least that potentially reduced the embarrassment factor for other people, if not for myself.

I met dvd at the tube station and we walked to Regent's Park, not really knowing where we were going. We talked about the numerous things that we forgot to bring - me: the camera and some snacky things to eat; dvd: a frisbee ("In case people aren't talking, I thought we could at least stand far apart and throw things at each other") - and found York Bridge by use of the extremely foolproof tourist maps of the park that are situated every hundred yards or so. Having got there we looked in vain for a group of possibly geeky people anywhere near the bridge. I started panicking slightly, as I am liable to do when I'm trying and failing to find people, and phoned Aquarion to be told that he and LoneCat were making their way over.

Eventually the four of us met up and Kevin bumped into us soon enough, whereupon we wandered around the area for a bit looking out for any other people wandering around aimlessly. However, seeing as it was now just after 3pm, we thought that there wouldn't be anyone still waiting from an hour before, when we were supposed to have met. Then the general feeling was, "Sod it, let's go to the pub." Which we did, and remained there for several hours - we were joined by Dave, mrtn and Stuart Langridge, as well as a couple of non-bloggers (one being my dad) before I left. (Apparently, having a dad who comes to blogmeets and buys rounds for people is a surefire way of raising your blogger status.)

It was interesting meeting everyone who so far I'd only known online, and in most cases I was rather gratified as to how nearly my image of them matched the reality. I enjoyed myself although, being rather quieter in person than online, I'm not sure whether this was evident. I'd like to assure people that if I'm sitting there quietly, listening to conversations rather than actively participating in them, and smiling or laughing in the right places, I am actually quite happy. Shyness is another thing I have to work on :)

All in all, it was very good. Hopefully there'll be more people at the August meet though. And I'll actually bring the camera next time.

Suddenly ground to a halt

I thought I had my life mapped out for the next five years - job set up for my gap year, three years doing Physics with Comp sci at Warwick university, then (hopefully) a year-long job with my gap year company should they decide to sponsor me through university.

However. This afternoon I received a phone call from the Physics admissions tutor at Warwick telling me that they are cancelling my course for October 2004 entry. He went on, "But I think, from reading your personal statement, that you're more a physicist with an interest in computer science rather than the other way around, is that right?" Well, no, actually. If any good universities offered a Comp Sci with Physics course (2:1 CS to Phy) I'd have applied for it.

So this leaves me with a few choices.

1. I can opt for a full Physics degree, which shouldn't be a problem admissions-wise. The admissions tutor added that hopefully by the time I would be in my third or fourth year, there would by then be some kind of computational physics options.
2. My UCAS form can be passed on to Warwick's Computer science department and they'll consider me for a Comp Sci degree. It sounds like I'll have to go through all the admissions stuff again, but it's unlikely I'll be called to interview or anything.
3. At the moment I am under obligation to go to Warwick if I achieve the required grades (A-B-B). But seeing as the course that I'm obliged to take won't exist, they can release me from the obligation and I can go to my second choice university, Bath.
4. I can withdraw from UCAS altogether and reapply for whatever I like in the next couple of months.

The first option isn't that tempting. I really do want to do some Comp. sci, as much as I can whilst still retaining some physics. This seems to point to option 3, going to Bath university instead. Except that I don't really want to. Yes, it was my second choice, but it was trailing far behind Warwick for a number of reasons, including campus and course. The computing part of their syllabus is mainly concerned with "the role of computers in physics" as the web page phrases it, and is therefore not ideal.

Withdrawing from UCAS and reapplying isn't something I'm considering seriously. I want to get this settled as soon as I can, and there weren't actually any other, different courses that I'd apply for now if I got the chance. This was what I wanted to do, and Bath's course was the second best choice.

What does sound attractive at the moment is opting for a full Comp Sci degree at Warwick. Being me, though, there is a "but" involved. Here goes.

Computer science is really a skill (or skills). I want knowledge. Reading books like In Search of Schrödinger's Cat and Richard P. Feynman's The Quantum Theory Of Light And Matter made me ache to learn more about quantum physics, relativity, and so on. I certainly don't want to study physics for the experimental skills gained - I'm a lousy experimental physicist. One of the main attractions of the Warwick course was that for the first two years, most of the lab time was replaced by comp sci modules. Another bonus about the joint degree is that (I've been told) it's more solid than a single degree and can potentially give you the edge when jobhunting.

Advice is gratefully welcomed on this matter because I really don't know what to do now. Am I being too picky about courses? Should I stick with straight Comp sci and absorb general physics knowledge for my own pleasure through reading things like The Elegant Universe (which should really be on my To Read list anyway), abandon the further physics education?

So come on, you people with life experience. Help me out here.

Back on track(ish)

Wow. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on my last post offering advice; it was really useful and there were a couple of thoughts in there that really helped me to come to a decision.

My application is being passed onto Warwick's Computer Science department for consideration to be accepted for a 4-year MEng CS course (for some reason the 3-year course is a BSc qualification; 4-years is an MEng). I've been advised that the entry requirements are a grade higher - A-A-B instead of A-B-B, so if I don't achieve those grades then I'll have to take Bath's Physics with Comp Sci course instead. Doing a straight CS course with a few Physics modules where I can get them seems to me to be a pretty good solution - I was never looking to have a career in Physics, really.

Fingers crossed it all works out.

Why 'Terminator' is definitely better than 'T2'

[On request from and inspired by dvd ;) Please note, this is a rough transcription of a rant which would be better delivered through speech. Spoilers herein.]

"The main difference between the two films is the terminator robot, yes? Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first film and Robert Patrick in the second? The brilliance of the first film is just the simple premise that, for whatever reason, there's this thing coming after you, this killing machine, and it's headed specifically straight for you and because it's a robot and has been programmed to do this, it can never do anything else until it is destroyed in some way. Cue the whole "you can't reason with it, and it will not stop until you are dead" speech. Okay, so there's this unstoppable thing coming for you, and the whole film is just a cat-and-mouse chase with Linda Hamilton staying just ahead of it all the time. But. But but but but. You fire a huge machine gun at it for about ten seconds solidly and this slows it down because it falls over and doesn't get up again for another five seconds. And you've damaged it a bit, which is to be expected if you machine-gun a robot for any period of time. And this gives you just enough time to get a little bit further away. So it chases you for days and eventually in desperation you blow up the big tanker lorry it's driving and it explodes in a huge ball of flames. And you subside with relief, and then it gets up. (Incidentally, that would have been an almost perfect shot had the camera not been focused quite so obviously on the background.) And you think, my God, what do you have to do to this thing to stop it? It's really rather damaged of course, but it's still there and it's still coming for you. And then in the factory at the end you smash it to pieces and you think, that must have done the trick, and then you see that it's putting itself together again, and again in terrified awe you think, what do you have to do to this thing? And then you find out that, in fact, you have to crush it in one of the machines, which you do gratefully. Fine. It may be very sophisticated, but you can see it's just a machine with little working bits. Fine. And now we come to T2:JD in which the bad robot is super-super-sophisticated technology and can somehow just absorb bullets in its chest and keep walking the whole time without even slowing down? And can suddenly unform itself to take on the shape of a little pool of mercury? I mean, come on, that's just CHEATING! And with this marvellous facility it can magically reform its arm into a machine gun complete with bullets? CHEATING! And can also perfectly take on the appearance of anything or anyone? CHEATING! In the first film, I know the robot could take on the voice of anyone it had heard but I'm prepared to believe that it could replicate a voice-print. Knowing what to say is another matter, but we'll let that one slide. But just completely reforming the body like that? CHEATING! And at the end of the very first chase scene they blow up the big tanker lorry it's driving and it explodes in a huge ball of flames. And lo, the robot - the cheating robot - comes striding out of the flames COMPLETELY unharmed. What can I say? Cheating! And in desperation they freeze it with liquid nitrogen or something and shatter it and, oh look, it does the mercury-pool thing and starts running together, and reforms itself COMPLETELY unharmed again. Cheating! And you think, not in terrified awe this time but in exasperation, my God, what do you have to do to this thing to stop it? Why doesn't it just die, already? I forget how they killed it in the end - it's a few years since I've watched it - but by that point the film had totally lost any shred of credibility it had and I found it very difficult to suspend my disbelief quite that far."