Knitting isn't good for you

Everyone loves snow!Hey world!

It's December now so I really do owe this blog another update. I know I keep committing myself to updating it on a more regular basis, and then totally forgetting about it for four months but this time I think we're on to a winner! More on that later. Firstly some other random shit that has happened since my last post…

Remember how I aced my driving theory test, only to totally flunk the practical on the grounds that I'm unsafe? Yeah, we all laughed then, but then I totally took the test again and now I'm totally legally allowed to drive! I don't own a car or anything, but the point is should the need arise I now have a license to run over all the grannies I want. That was the whole point of the exercise right?

After that long old placement year I moved on and returned to the University life. I don't know if it was the year out, all the brain cells I've killed or that this is just what final years are like, but I certainly don't remember this shit being as hard. They actually want me to do quite a lot of work. What's up with that? One of the things we need to produce this year is two games in flash (one single player, one multiplayer). My single player game is about eating pie, while avoiding celery (because vegetables are bad for you). It's quite a way from being done, and I don't take any pride in the home made graphics, but this should give you an idea of where I'm going (ignore the score which is going up on its own and your inability to actually interact with the food).

Meanwhile, some rapscallions burned down Hastings Pier. See some of the awesome pictures my dad took here.

I also seem to have become annoyingly accident prone lately, or I'm just having a bad month. About five weeks ago I kicked a strapping chap at karate and injured my foot in the process. Initially I didn't think much of the pain (thinking I had just done a bad kick), but it continued for weeks. Eventually I visited the doctor and they x-rayed it thinking it might be fractured, but it turns out I just had severe internal bruising. It's not quite as impressive sounding, but at least it seems to be getting better.

Much worse however was my accident a couple days ago where I succeeded in stabbing a very large knitting needle into the palm of my hand. The dog knocked a laptop of the arm rest of a chair and in my failed attempt to catch it I jammed my hand straight down into what turned out to be a basket full of wool and knitting needles. Unlucky for me a single needle was pointing up out of the basket and firmly imbedded itself deep enough for me to raise my hand up and have the needle fully support itself. I instinctively yanked the thing out immediately, resulting in much pain and blood. It looks like a pathetically small scab now, but for a couple of days it was too painful to use the entire hand. The irony of the whole thing is the laptop landed on the ground perfectly fine...

Oh, and over the last week it snowed. A lot.

So thats me up to date. Back to the subject I alluded to at the beginning, the reason I will soon be blogging much more often is my final year project. I plan to develop a social whisky iPhone application for the folks I worked at during my placement year and to aid me in producing all the crazy documentation I need to do I’m going to blog the whole thing. The final deadline for my project is Friday 29th April 2011, so between now and then expect to see a lot here about my project's progress, plans, ideas and the successes and failures along the way. It should be fun, and please feel free to give me comments, advise and feedback along the way.

Once more, with feeling!

So this happened...Hey world! It's me again...

So that april resolution thing didn't exactly kick off as I had intended, but I have high hopes for August. I mean, I'm only eight months into the year. As it would turn out having a job is a lot like working and not having a lot of free time. Whats up with that?

So let's summarise whats happened since April, then move on with our lives.

I passed my driving theory test! I got a face stomping 49/50 in the multiple choice section and a respectable 65/75 in hazard perception. Rather curiously they don't tell you what you got wrong, so there is apparently one very crucial rule of the road that I got completely wrong and never will be corrected on. Fantastic! To be honest though, the whole test is one hilarious joke. Some questions seriously involve what type of glasses you should wear in blinding sun, and one of the answers is "half mooned"...

I found out that one of my wisdom teeth had grown right up against the back wall where I couldn't physically clean it. This resulted in a lot of bad things, and long story short a nasty old man had to rip the bloody thing out of my head. It turns out that being a dentist can be exceedingly barbaric at times, and I found the whole "I'm going to hold you down and yank part of you out of your skull" thing to be a pretty awful experience. But hey, I got this awesome picture to show all my friends!

The folks at work had a hog roast and beer hunt. That was pretty awesome.

Two of my bestest best friends from way back in school were going to have a baby, but tragically lost him about five months into the pregnancy. I attended my first funeral, one of the most horrific moments in my entire life. I try my best to help them cope with their loss, but sometimes you feel like there is nothing you can truly say or do that will make it better for them. I just hope to never experience something like this ever again.

I completed my placement year and took a month off to relax. You'd have thought I would have been more productive during a whole month off and oh, I don't know, post something on this here blog, but I didn't. It just shows how much I truly enjoyed it!

Commiseration present.I failed my driving practical test. The thing was going swimmingly until on the sixth stop and start (where you have to pull over at a safe place, then drive away again) I pulled over on a down hill and in the time it took me to look and pull out some jerk (clearly speeding) appeared over the top of the hill and had to slow down as I pulled out. Apparently this was unsafe as I caused him to slow and I got a serious fault that failed me. Unfortunately due to a new part of the test they are bringing in in October everyone is trying to pass now and there is a ten week waiting list to retake it. That time is almost up however and I retake my test next Tuesday! The folks at work also sent me a rather kind commiseration present.

I completed all the bullshit the British Computer Society want you to do to recorgnise your placement year. Pro tip for anyone planning to do somthing similar at University; actually do your documentation while on placement. Being the A+ procrastinator that I am, I left it until six days before it was due in and completed it with just hours to spare. Go me!

I finally got back into this exercise lark. After the first few months of my placement year all the commuting and work wore me down pretty bad and I pretty much gave up attending karate sessions or doing any exercise at all. Thats all changed now, as I'm back to training 2/3 times a week plus doing weekly 3 mile runs with some friends. I hope to finally grade and get my 1st kyu in December. Wish me luck!

I got a job! So after putting up with me for a whole year the folks I worked for decided they just couldn't live without me, so they offered me a real bonified job gosh darn it. Obviously I still plan to go back and do my final year at University, so I'll only be working part time with them come October, but holy cow, someone actually hired me for realz. I fooled them good and proper!

So that's the status of me! Wasn't that fun?

Let's hope I don't come back in another four months and have to do this all over again...

Road Rage

This is my happy face!So driving...

I've been doing that for a while now. I'm not exactly qualified and I've yet to take my theory test, let alone do the part where you have to impress a soggy old man with your mind blowing manoeuvre, mirror, signal skills (I think that was the right order), but I've certainly been doing it a while. Long enough in fact, that if I were an authority in charge of handing out licences to commit road rage, I would think twice before putting one in my grubby little mitts. 

Not because I'm a bad driver, far from it. I actually think that I'm pretty good at this lark. Not to beat my own trumpet or anything, but I make three point turns an art form and laugh in the face of people who struggle to parrell park. No, the problem with driving is all the other fuckers.

I'm certainly sure in the future I will be the complete definition of a hypocrite, but when you're learning to drive and you have an instructor forcing you to drive to the letter, it can be simply infuriating to see how bad everyone else is doing it. How some of these deaths waiting to happen got a licence in the first place is anyones guess, when apparently I can fail my test for simply touching the line in a parking bay. 

And then when you're not imaging the 999 phone call for the flaming wreckage likely to happen in front of you at any moment, you have to cope with the roads themselves, designed by people that were clearly taking some sort of psychotic drug at the time. Between the record number of speed bumps, enlarged pavements thats make it impossible to have two lanes of traffic moving at the same time and traffic lights simply everywhere, it's a shocker that people get anywhere.

To help matters, I've also noticed that local councils seem to believe that people simply can't be trusted with zebra crossing anymore, because they are quickly replacing them one by one with traffic lights.

And all this is without mentioning roundabouts, a unique idea in which you "trust" that everyone else knows left from right and gives way at the right time. You'd have better luck seeing someone clean their hands in a fast food restaurant's dump station.

So there you have it. I've become a cranky old bastard. Perfect.