"Wasting" time

I'm having one of those days, or indeed weeks, where one questions the point of everything one's doing. Or not doing, as is the case with my 18,000 word dissertation, whose word count stands at a defiant zero.

I apologise to those of you who have tried to contact me recently and have been met with silence. It's nothing personal.

I must write a good dissertation, and submit it on April 28th. Then I must "revise" (read: learn from scratch) five or six modules worth of course material so I stand a chance in the exams three weeks later.

And all so I can get a good graduate job, right? Right. Thing is, all I really want to do right now is play piano and write games.

Aww. No sympathy from the audience. It's the classic case of the lazy student facing up to the real world, isn't it?

But whatever happened to chasing your dreams?! Maybe I could make a living writing music? Or writing and self-publishing indie (I term them "nu-shareware") video games? (A significant voice in my mind reckons that I should go full-time on Millennium 3 until it's done, and then market it as a niche product for hardcore space-sim fans.)

But I'm supposed to be here to get a decent "proper" job, and if I screw up my degree then I'm doomed, or so they tell me. And all this thinking about the future is just making me get up later each day.

You see, in summertime, when I'm working at Aqua Pacific every day, I don't have time to think about where I'm going and why. When back at uni, it's far too easy to fall into a big pit of existentialist goo. You quickly lose the motivation to get up in the afternoon.

So what I should probably do is just hurl myself into busywork until after the exams after over, and always fight the urge to ask "why". To start with, I'm going to pledge to write something on here at least once a day for the next seven days.

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bl'Air

So, President Blair toured the country today (Friday) in a Big Red Helicopter, stopping at six focus-group'd locations across the UK, to kiss teachers, shake babies' hands, and apparently deliver some innovative election pledge solutions. I mention this solely because one of the six venues was Myton School, Warwick, which regular readers may know that I attended during the fine years of 1995-2001.

I almost wish I'd been there to stage a protest for the TV cameras. By "stage a protest" I of course mean "lurk off-camera (and out of earshot) muttering to familiar people". Good job, then, that the pro-hunt lobby turned up to keep the PM's day interesting.

You might wish to peruse the school's own account of the day, or look at their thumbnail photos, which could really use links to full-size versons. Sadly, there are no pics of the hunt supporters attempting to storm the school field.

According to the school, our Labour MP James Plaskitt was also attending, although none of the articles on the wider web seem to mention the poor guy. Maybe that was the only time he'll ever get to meet the PM as well.

Sorry, James Plaskitt. Splaskitt. It's been a bad week, you see. Today I was a pall-bearer at my paternal grandmother's funeral in Wales. My maternal grandmother died on Wednesday, and her funeral is a week Tuesday.

Strangely, one of my lingering memories of today's funeral is that of the reluctantly bilingual undertaker. When explaining pall-bearing procedure to me and three of my cousins, he spoke only in Welsh, so one of the twins pointed out that I didn't speak it, and could he please give us instructions in English. The undertaker said something obscure along the lines of "We're all in this together, boys", and then carried on talking in Welsh, but with the occasional concessional (and quite unhelpful) English phrase. Luckily my cousins are capable translators.

I end this entry with brief thanks to Mr Blair for lightening my day by allowing me to see Mr Hecks smiling on ITN when I got home.

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Electronic Bay

I'm selling my Roland SRX-02 Concert Piano expansion board, which has been living inside my Fantom synth since I bought them both. Thing is, I want to retire my trusty but ailing Yamaha P80 stage piano and get a new, lighter, synth-weighted controller keyboard for live use with the XV-2020 sound module, and since I haven't been making much use of the SRX-02's admittedly pretty sounds, it's an asset I can't justify hanging onto when I want money for new gear.

Roland are supposed to be bringing out another piano expansion board, the SRX-11, which may tempt me in the future if I get sick of the onboard pianos in the gear I've got. I shall be understandably wary, though, of buying another SRX board that I might just end up eBaying again. Still, I get to try out lots of cool gear this way :-)

So, in the highly unlikely event that you have a Roland SRX-compatible synth or module (XV-2020, XV-5050, XV-3080, XV-5080, XV-88, VR-760, Fantom, RD-700, and others) and fancy some new piano sounds, check out my auction.

To those of my readers who aren't similarly obsessed, I apologise for this brief detour into synthesiser geek land.

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Charity

So, the university tried to direct debit £1,133 from me for this term's tuition fees and rent. Painful, but anticipated. Indeed, I'd already transferred sufficient monies into my bank account to allow the transaction to proceed without quite hitting the overdraft limit. Hadn't I?

I realised my mistake when I saw £35 had disappeared from my bank account with the suspicious annotation of "CHARGES". Of course, I'd transferred funds into the wrong account, namely my old "current account" instead of the student account I use most nowadays.

I know that banks make a lot of money from user stupidity like mine, so I was rather crestfallen but not exactly surprised by the damage. I sent a swift and apologetic email to the relevant university department, begging them to retry their direct debit sooner rather than later, lest I accrue their late payment charges as well. A friendly reply informed me that if I phoned up and paid by card by 31st January, I wouldn't get any late payment charges. Yay. However, they would be charging me a failed direct debit charge of 2.5% of the original amount, or £28.33.

A grand total of £63.33 of hard-earned cash frivolously donated to these two mighty institutions means I'll be more careful which account I transfer to in future...

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Hello

Hi.

Does anyone read this any more? I thought not. Can't say I blame you.

Nevertheless, this is just what it seems - a no strings attached, bona fide update, albeit a short one. Easing back into the blogging paradigm is going to be a gradual, careful process. Don't want to strain my fingers.

The reason I've finally come crawling back to this website (besides the accumulated shame at its stagnancy) is that I suddenly noticed it was becoming snowed under by the latest scourge of the blog-enabled intarweb generation - comment spam. My beloved, neglected m3fe.com had become gaily festooned with dozens upon dozens of illiterate ads for wholesome stuff like "online poker" and "replica Rolx watches" [sic], and I decided that enough was enough. After deleting all the spam accrued to date, I improved clunkyblog with a new blacklisting system, which should help me tackle future infestations more swiftly.

I also now get a notification email when someone leaves a comment somewhere on the site, so I have no more excuses for taking ages to reply to them :-)

Finally, I've added an all-new section featuring a couple of informal piano MP3s recorded on my finance-shatteringly wonderful new keyboard. I'm going to fill this one up with similar recordings as I make them.

More updates will follow, with some kind of consolidated news on general happenings from the last six months. Honest, guv.

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EA spouse

This has been all over the web for a few days now, but just in case... if you're working in (or interested in working in) the games industry, then read EA: The Human Story.

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Toxicity

Scaremongering, or good cause to think about what you're breathing?

First exam finished an hour ago. Was satisfactory, I think. 10 to go.

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Psycho City

A short disclaimer: Officially, I have decided to resume regular writings after the exams, but this story warrants a special entry, since it's the first vaguely amusing thing to happen in a fair while.

So. When I got back from Oxford at 2am on Saturday night, there were no empty parking spaces or car-sized patches of pavement anywhere near the house, so I'd driven further down the road and parked on the pavement outside one of the bungalows, being careful not to block anyone's drive or anything like that. I ventured out to my car the following afternoon to find this lovely letter wedged in the driver's door. For those of you reading this using a text-only browser or a mobile device, here is the full text of the letter:

WHEN THERE IS  PARKING
OUTSIDE YOUR PROPERTY
PLEASE DO NOT PARK HERE
AGAIN

THANKYOU

Yes, quite. Thank you, scary elderly couple.

I've tried to preserve the formatting, but you really have to see the thing to appreciate the psychotic vibes it radiates. I mean, just look at the capital letters. The uneven spacing and the huge margins. "AGAIN" threatens remarkably well on a line all of its own.

The only aspect that you can't appreciate over the old information superweb is the quality of the paper. It's good, thick stuff, not your standard laser/copier fare.

When I proudly distributed the photo on I.R.C., the discussion quickly turned to the form that a prospective reply might take. I was considering some kind of ransom note, fashioned lovingly from traditional magazine cutouts.

IF YOU WANT YOUR
PARKING SPACE BACK
DEPOSIT 5 MILLION POUNDS
IN THE WHEELIE BIN
OUTSIDE NUMBER 39

THANKYOU

James's suggestion was, I thought, quite masterfully distasteful:

WHEN THERE IS ROOM
IN THE GRAVEYARD
PLEASE DO NOT TAKE UP HOUSES
OTHER PEOPLE COULD USE

THANKYOU

John suggested simply scrawling "NO" in my own blood on the original letter and returning it. Concise and really quite elegant.

I just wish I wasn't scared of getting arrested.

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$0.O2

I just called O2 Customer Services to enquire about a new handset. After listening to 9,600bps music at national rate for 15 minutes, I got through to a call centre droid who politely informed me that their systems were down and they couldn't access anyone's account details. Call back tomorrow morning.

Now, I paid for a 15 minute call to be told that, and the guy on the other end was paid to tell me. Why wasn't it in a recorded message played as soon as I selected 'handset upgrade' from the menu?

I thanked the droid and hung up. It wasn't his fault, after all.

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According to the good denizens of the Bandsoc forum, I look more prog than Dan! Sorry, Dan.

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