Arbitrary desk contents
26/5/2007
Some of the rather peculiar items you will find in the environs of my desk (or would, if you looked) include:
- 14p in 1p and 2p pieces
- 2 hairbands belonging to a flautist from school called Sophie
- Numerous old bus tickets
- 1 dwarf
- 1 cereal pack toy which projects the image of a crocodile onto a wall
- 2 tape measures - one of the clothes-making sort, and one of the DIY sort
- 1 wine-bottle sealing vacuum thingy
- 1 many-month old crust of bread
- 1 of me
What does this tell you about me? ;-) (P.S. There's a reason or a story behind all the entries on the list bar one)
Prepare yourselves
23/5/2007
Yes that's right, this Friday it is strongly recommended that you know where your towel is - and that it's preferably with you all the time, if only for the funny looks you'll get from strangers, giving you the opportunity to feel superior ;-). A little disappointingly, I'm going to be at home revising all day (a process that's beginning to get fully under way, whooppee...). This of course means that, although I'll be within a few inches of my towel for most of the day, I'm going to be the only one who knows that I know where my towel is. I might have to go out on a walk about cheltenham, just to show it off ;-)
For anyone who's still staring blankly at the screen, wondering what the hell I'm chatting about, Towels are a very important part of life for a hitchhiker, especially one travelling a whole galaxy. Of course, if you didn't understand the reference, you're going to think it's a little over the top to celebrate an author in such a silly way... I wont try to explain quite how wrong you are, there isn't time ;-) Maybe if you get yourself access to the originals, by this time next year you'll be ready to take up thy towel and walk.
Grump
22/5/2007
...*mumble*...bloody year 12s...*grump*... You know last time I mentioned the great lego project? I may as well tell you now what it was for: if we'd only been able to get our head of sixth form into his office for a few minutes, he'd have opened his door to find himself walled up by a rather impressive lego construction...
Please bear in mind that the table in front of the wall stands at least 3 feet off the ground, so that pic only shows the top half of the masterwork... I was longing for that perfect moment, just to see his face through the window there... would've been a beautiful thing. But he never went in to his office, so it couldn't happen. I had held out some hope that we'd be able to put the plan into effect later on, but now some @#!!ing year 12s have destroyed the whole thing :-( Nothing's left...
And that doesn't just mean that I wont get to brick up an office door. In order to get the necessary quantity of bricks, I needed to borrow some from various people. Whilst the wall was still in one piece that was fine - different sections were made from different people's bricks, carefully marked off, so we could redistribute it in no time. Now that it's all in pieces, there's no way of telling who provided what... And matters like the losing of that quantity of lego could well be enough to end a friendship ;-)
A full stop
19/5/2007
As of three PM yesterday, Friday the eighteenth of May two thousand and seven, I will never attend another day of school. It feels huge. I've spent a huge portion of my life - nearly half of it, given that as yet it hasn't been of great length - at that school. And I've been enjoying it more and more as time has gone on: especially through the last couple of years in sixth form. It's quite mad to realise that I'll never lie on the grass in the sixth form garden, with some of the most wonderful people I know. If I'm not hopeless, I wont be losing those beautiful people, but it'll never be quiute the same again - and that assumption that I'm not hopeless may well be flawed...
I'd had great plans for the last day, as well, which never quite came to fruition, adding to my melancholy... The main reason for my lack of updates here over the last week has been the monster project of constructing a 5 foot high wall in lego. And to give you some idea of the scale of the thing, I worked out that, if I'd had enough of the basic 2x4 blocks it would have taken 6000 blocks to get up to my planned height of 6 foot 6. Since I dont have anywhere close to 6000 of the same type of block, I ended up using many smaller pieces, so I expect that in the 5 foot height I was well over that number in all. But all to nought ;-)
I suppose I just need to take a step back and assess the whole lot - just because I'm feeling sad and nostalgic doesn't mean I should lie to myself, and pretend I've loved every minute, or will miss everyone who I wont see again... But, especially over the last two years, I think I have loved most of the minutes, and I will miss a lot of the year group. And now (although I apologise for this moment of undenyable soppyness) a little bit of lyricism from Oasis to end:
I'm no stranger to this place
Where real life and dreams collide
But even though I fall from grace
I will keep the dream alive
It's been a great dream, and I desperately don't want to wake up, so I hope we will.
Thudmeister 2007
12/5/2007
It seems I'm actually alright at this Thud lark... as of a couple of hours ago I am the champion of the 2007 international thud tournament. And, although there were only 8 people in the tournament (;-)), those who were playing were pretty damn good. The only problem is that probably the best player in the tournament (and defending champion), was forced to retire due to ill health... so basically I beat some good players, but not others. Still, it feels good to be the world champion at something... it's not a feeling I've experienced before, nor am I likely to again, as far as I can tell.
I've also been tweaking the site a little. I've updated the links page, including adding some new blogs that I'm now paying attention to, as well as a couple of good bits in the "misc" section - check out the "Other People" link to your left if you're interested. I've also neatened up the contact page, which frankly was so straightforward that I kinda feel guilty for not doing it before.
3,2,1 you're back in the room
10/5/2007
I said last time I'd be away for a week... unfortunately, when I got back there was much bad voodoo hanging over the site. The technical reason (skip this bit if you prefer the voodoo explanation) was that, although I'd asked my new ISP for a static IP address, I hadn't got one. So when I wasn't looking my IP address changed - suddenly gilesfleming.com didn't point to my server anymore. However, a static IP address has now been achieved, so it shouldn't happen again.
What you've missed has been the steady creeping up of the end of school. As of today I have 6 school days left in my life, and I'm quite worried - because I think I should be truly terrified, and I'm not really :-S. I've also been playing a lot of Thud, and I'm in the final of this year's international tournament. Oh, and my laptop did recover when I tossed out SUSE linux and reverted to my preferred linux flavour, Mandriva.