Signed out
27/6/2007
Another stage of the end happened today... All the exams being over, I've had to give up my textbooks (which was a particular struggle in chemistry) and get my leaver's form signed by sundry teachers. So now I think I'm legally no longer a student of the school that's been so huge in my world for 7 years. Doesn't feel as painful as the last real day of school did, tho - I guess that's because the people I made a break from then are more important than the establishment I was officially severing links with today.
Of course, none of this means I've been doing any less school stuff than usual. I seem to have gone into school more or less every day since we broke up, and I'm not going to be any better at breaking the habbit now that I've signed out. Tomorrow we're going to London to see the Billy Elliot musical. Next week I'll be on my Duke of Edinburgh assessment expedition. I'll go in on at least one day the week after for my flute lesson, then it's the music residential. After that it would be the hollidays anyway ;-). To be honest, that last residential (which has been the end of every school year) will probably be the most painful, despite it being normal to separate for a while.
However, we're the lucky ones. Even ten years ago, leaving school must have been innevitably the end for a lot of friends. The best contact details you could give would've been a home address/phone number, and the essence of leaving school is that you're moving onwards and outwards, probably leaving home too. But we get email addresses, that never need to change. We get mobile numbers - again, transferable in perpetuity. And perhaps the most effective of all (at least for me) will be the instant messaging world. I can be fairly sure that I'll be able to just notice someone online, and have a chat. I wont need a special reason to contact them, or have to do anything more than click and type. Thinking about it, the msn messaging protocol is about the last bit of microsoft code I use in my day-to-day life... I don't of course use the "official" msn program, partly because it wouldn't run on linux, and partly because it's a bit buggy. But I can be pleased with the boys from Redmond for knocking that one out. It may not be technically superior to the numerous other protocols, but it's there - and "there" is everywhere. So yeah, chalk that up to things I'm thankful to Mr Gates for :-)
I wont have to miss you, BHPs :-D
Listen
20/6/2007
No, really listen...
When I listen to music, I almost always listen actively as it were - I put myself in the mindset that I'm the one singing it. Often, of course, I am singing along, but even when I'm not I feel as if I am. I've really no idea whether everyone does that, or whether it's cos I'm a singer, or whether it's cos I'm weird enough to often sing along to songs, despite being both male and seventeen... Id be interested to know whether I'm alone in this. Depending on the song, there might be someone in my head that I'm singing to, and they might be a real person, or an idealised one, or a mix of various people, or an embodyment of an idea. But usually it's me, trying to communicate with this other figure, I think.
Today, tho, I really listened. I stopped being the performer, and let everyone from Chester Bennington to Bono (who I don't think I need to explain with a link) sing to me. It became them, trying to communicate with me. And it was extraordinarily theraputic... I found it very difficult to keep up this idea of being personally the object of the songs - it felt absurdly self-centred to even play with the idea - but while it lasted it was hugely comforting... I suppose because of that self-centred egotism. But I needed to be comforted, and told, in the most beautiful ways, that I was special, so I hope people wont think any less of me (were that possible ;-)).
"Why did you need comforting Giles?" I hear you ask (although not really wanting to know, but feeling that you ought to). Well to put it simply, I cocked up today's exams - particularly the history one (of the three history papers I felt easily best prepared for this, but I fucked it up). And that was after a slight bit of uncertainty about the other history paper (the bloody Nazis) on monday. So I've now convinced myself (and I don't think all that unreasonably) that I wont get an A in History. So I need to rely on Chemistry if I want to Cambridge, and that's like saying "I'm dangling over a volcano, and the steel cable I was holding just snapped. Now, I shall rely on this bit of dental floss I found in my pocket". I'll go to Durham, then... Not the end of the world, and there are a couple of wonderful people who I know will be there. And the music fast-tracked me through the stages of acceptance, so I don't feel that cross, or sad, or in denial, or anything. Just have to move on.
I don't want this post to turn into an exam moan, cos the music stuff really interested me... So I'll bring this back on track by saying that I, personally, am very grateful Linkin Park changed style around on their last album - I dont think "One Step Closer" would have been nearly as comforting as "Shadow of the Day" was ;-)...
In other news...
15/6/2007
My life continues to be very dull, stuck in a time loop that seems to constantly require me to revise only the Nazis and Mineral Process Chemistry - I'm sure I worked out the timetable to be fair, but those two are coming up unreasonably often... So instead I present a news round-up of the rest of the world, at least partly to remind myself that it still exists ;-)
Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded the Order of Merit, which seems like an all-round worthy news story. Good bloke (for those as don't know, he essentially invented the web - i.e. remotely hosted pages on the internet, that thing we've been wasting our lives on ever since), and the queen giving away one of the few titles that she still actually choses personally, so are still fairly non-political. And it is nice to be reminded occasionally that the web isn't an american invention, much as they'd like us to think it was ;-). Sorry guys, it's probably too easy a line to be worth making :-S
The International Space Station is broken, thanks to all six Russian controlling computers mysteriously dying within about 24 hours. It might be linked to the new extension they were building (NASA's conservatory if you will), which just went into operation - supposed to be providing extra power, though. At the moment it's only being controlled from the docked shuttle, and if it can't be fixed they might all have to run off home... This space travel lark is a risky business, it seems - who'd have guessed?
The big one, of course, is that Gaza is f***ed... Looks like Hamas is trying to set up yet another independent state, leaving Fatah in charge of the West Bank. Gonna be messy, I fear, but looking at the picture in that article, something strikes me as a little incongruous. Masked men with AK-47s have burst into an office - to do the filing? ;-) It's hard to take the story so seriously when you can't stop smiling at that idea.
But most important of all is the news that the town of Delcambre, Louisiana has banned low-hanging trousers. Now I don't particularly enjoy people displaying their boxers, but surely defining it as indecent exposure when underwear is visible is a little extreme... Apart from anything else, there are surely bigger problems for the Delcambre legislature to ponder, aren't there? I mean, I know it's boring in the southern states, but not that boring, surely... One of the commenters on that article picked out something particularly good:
Delcambre Mayor Carol Broussard earlier this week confirmed he will sign the proposal...he said of trouser low-riders: "They're better off taking the pants off and just wearing a dress"
So a man named Carol wants guys to wear dresses? And he's the one making the laws... Right...
D2
11/6/2007
Not a lot of note happening in my life, to be honest... I get into a very insular state in exam season, as I expect most people do. I've just had my second exam, Decision Maths unit 2. It was always going to be easy, and it was, but unfortunately I'm fairly sure it makes almost no difference what I get in it :-S. Because of how maths and further maths fit together, if I get less than 92% it just means I get a less high A in single maths - if I get more than that, I have to get 1 or 2 fewer marks in the other two modules that are left... Those remaining ones, the hard ones, I need to get a total of about 150 out of the two sets of 100 marks - they mean something. Oh shucks.
While remaining insular, I have been having some fun coding for the site :-). I love getting into a new challenge with my computers, and I'm thinking of putting together a site for photos from our year 13 leaver's ball (much as I did for the year 11 bash)*. However, that last time I had to hand-write several hundred pages of html (one for each photo and gallery), so I thought this time I'd create a script to do the work for me, and just fill in a database. So far it's looking quite successful and, as I say, I'm rather enjoying myself :-D. GEEK :-D
*As a side note, if anyone from school (who I haven't asked already) has strong opinions as to whether this is a good idea or not, leave a comment here or email me. I was wondering whether facebook and bebo have replaced the need for it, but I think it's still worth doing for a few reasons: firstly if you don't have an account on those sites, or aren't friends with the right people, you'll still be able to get to the pictures. Secondly it'll be simpler - no logins, and all (well, many at least) of the ball photos brought together in one place. And hopefully it'll be more long-lasting... those sites strike me as quite zeitgeist-ish, so when the fashion moves on and everyone abandons them, this site will still (touch wood) be here. Please feel free to agree or disagree with those arguments ;-)
Venezuelan democracy
8/6/2007
We may never see the mooted "Chinese Democracy" album (and even if we do, it'll hardly be GnR...). But in the mean time it seems that Venezuela may be getting in on the action. I'll be honest, I haven't done sufficient leg-work to be sure whether the comparison is fair, but I wanted to bring up this news and I liked the Venezuelan Democracy title ;-)
You may have heard the rumblings about Radio Caracas TV (RCTV) being shut down by Chavez, after apparently becomming too critical of him... But Ars reports that we may have finally found a valid use for Youtube: RCTV are moving online, and so far have had a couple of hundred thousand hits in the first week :-). Thailand, of course, has already blocked Youtube for far less, but so far Chavez seems to be being quite tolerant... we shall see.
In theory, of course, this is the beautiful dream that the internet is for. Freely available information and freedom of expression. Of course the signal to noise ratio is obscenely poor - mostly it's meaningless ramblings such as this or porn. Yet even this is too much for some. It's not just censorship amid repressive dictatorships (although it's worth restating my admiration for irrepressible), a few weeks ago an article popped up on /. listing 25 big stories that went "unnoticed" A few of those are irrelevancies, or obvious to anyone who's been paying attention, but some are very interesting (even if one cant take some of the sources at face value: of course greenpeace are going to be keen to blame american oil interests for Kyoto failures, you just have to make up your own mind as to whether the arguments they use are valid...).
Of arson and exams
8/6/2007
A little excitement has been permeating my little revision-centric bubble over the last few days. The big one today was the beginning of the actual target of all this revision - my first exam, on "Containing Communism? The USA in Asia 1950-73". I think it went rather well - the question was essentially on why America couldn't win in Vietnam, which is a fairly standard essay. Of course I had to adapt it to fit the specific timeframe and main factor of this particular question, but it wasn't something I was unfamiliar with. Happy about that one. 7 to go.
The other shock happened on tuesday: I help out with the local beaver pack (beavers as in younger versions of scouts, not as in fresh-water mammals...), and we were out in the garden doing some relay races when one of the young fellows noticed dark smoke coming over the roof of the scout hut. Sure enough, some bugger had dumped a moped in the garden on the other side of the building and set fire to it. So we summoned the fire brigade (the first time I've seen them in action, I might add), and headed inside for a quick game of ball-tag. On the basis that there was probably petrol involved, I gave up on the idea of putting out myself - although it wasnt a dauntingly huge fire, we only had water extinguishers around, and you ain't supposed to use them on flamable liquids. By the time the fire brigade arrived, of course, it was almost burned out, and seemed a little disappointing really, but I was nonetheless quite pleased to see them... Once you've got protective parents around, you can't be too careful ;-)
Apparently the police might try to work out who dumped it, but they probably wont given that it didn't have a number plate or anything else obviously identifying (especially after the onset of fire). People who know where I live will understand quite how funny it is to find gang conflicts spilling over into this particularly middle-class suburbia... Just keeps people outside their comfort zones, I guess, which is good. I seem to have a lot positive to say about arson, don't I... That's a bit worrying :-S
Icelandic obsession
4/6/2007
For some time now I've been developing an extreme (possibly even unnatural) fascination with Iceland. It was probably triggered by my discovery of the beautiful Sigur Rós, but I think that just because they paint such perfect pictures of their home country - it was more reminding a deeper bit of my mind that it loved the idea of the country than planting a new idea. Part of it is undoubtedly the perfect image of that landscape - imagine yourself in that picture, and tell me it doesn't have a particularly special, ancient feel to it... you could well believe yourself to be the first person ever, if you got the chance to walk that way.
Of course that's where art again makes its presence felt in this - that feeling is exemplified by midwinter's morning, in one of the greatest books ever written*. It's probably not a coincidence that there's been such a link forged for me between two of the central pieces of artistic genius in my life and this particular obsession. Certainly Iceland lends itself very well to that sort of connection.
It might be looked upon as a little sad that I spent a couple of wonderful hours today reading IcelandReview, perhaps especially because (having a population of around half a million) day-to-day national news in Iceland is rather similar to a local newspaper in the UK - they have to work a bit hard to find the stories. But that's just another aspect of the appeal to me... How can you not love a country with a population so small and close-knit that everyone is referred to by their first name? Can you imagine how it would be if people in Britain thought of our Prime Minister as "Tony", rather than "that tosser Blair"... No wonder Iceland gets turnouts around 85-90% in elections.
Another naming convention that they can still get away with, thanks to such a small population, is patronymic naming (everyone takes the father's name as their surname, adding "son" or "dottir". Sometimes they take their mother's name instead, but although it's sometimes done simply because the name sounds better that way, it would generally be seen as a statement of some kind). So the telephone directory is arranged by first name :-D. It's a beautiful way to be...
Oh yeah, one more thing... All being well, at some point next year (as part of my gap year), I'm going to get the chance to go! Can't wait :-D
* Here we see the evidence that you can't judge a book by it's cover... the "artwork" there is so cruel to the beautiful artistry inside...