Sunday 30 May 2010

Exams are done!

Yep, that's right. No more high school exams, ever. Physics made its magnificent way onto the 'done' pile on Friday (in a most successful fashion), leaving me free to faff about whilst I wait for the results to come out.

Soo, I'll probably have to code something at some stage. On that front, I've been wandering around my 'code' folder to see what's what, and it appears that all that remains to be done to finish GraviQuest completely is the last level's layout file. And it's already been started. So essentially, once I manage to finish that one level, GraviQuest should be ready for release! I'll be sure to update here when it is.

And, at the same time, I've been wandering around the 'imagination' folder within my brain, seeking out ideas for a project to fill posts here with. And I'm pleased to say that I have found just the thing. It has all the shiny spiffiness and questionable purposefulness you will have come to expect from an ExeSoft program, whilst simultaneously being a pleasant break from the norm. However, I shalln't be disclosing the precise nature of this secret (as of right now) project yet. Mwaha. But you can probably expect to see something of it in my next post, which incidentally will be this blog's hundredth! Terrifying thought, isn't it? I've been wittering into space for almost two and a half years, posting an average of once every 9.2 days (it was once every two or three days when the blog began...), and in that time (assuming an average of 400 words per post) I've written almost 40,000 words. One of these days I'll have to publish it all as some form of book on how to blog unsuccessfully, or perhaps as a non-standard novel exploring the issues of insanity and procrastination. The options are endless... or beginningless. But anyway. Secret projects call! And of course GraviQuest grovels, begging to be finished. Good bye!

Wednesday 26 May 2010

It's brief update time, chaps!

Because I'm far too lazy to write anything of length at the moment. Why, you ask? Aah, well that is to be explained in this very post. Well, this paragraph-post. Yes, that's right - I intend to do it all in one paragraph. Mwaha! Brevity is at the soul of my wit, certainly. And tediousness adorns its limbs and outward flourishes. But let that go. To reach pertinently for the point of the paragraphical post, I shall share with you my progress through the realm of examinations. Well, English is still done (although I don't recall whether I mentioned it or not, and can't be bothered checking), and Maths has followed suit. The latter was, to re-use a phrase, glorious and victorious. And just this very day, History too joined the list of exams gone by, in what was actually a relatively painless exam. There were iffy parts, and there were magnificent parts, and overall my hope is that these two extremes of performance shall wed in splendorous fashion producing a final result of an A. So now all that remains in terms of exams is good old Physics on Friday, for which I am doing a bit of revision even as I type. And once that has passed, and been passed, I shall be free! Free, to... get a job. Alas.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Damn you, TalkTalk!

Hello all, we meet again! But today, things are different - today I come to you battle-scarred and wounded, limping, with the blood of a thousand technological foes dripping from my sword: today, I come to you glorious and victorious. The foe? None other than my ISP,good ol' TalkTalk. The battle? Well, allow me to expound...

I'd like to think that by this stage everyone on the 'net would have attained an awesomeness level sufficient to be using Firefox, but regrettably I hear that there are still those who cling to Internet Explorer. So, for this (hopefully small) minority, allow me to illuminate one of the many magnificent features of Firefox: when you type something non-URLey into the URL bar and press enter, it does a Google search-by-name for the input and oftentimes takes you straight to the appropriate website - for instance, were you to type in 'ExeSoft' you'd find yourself transported right here (hoorah!).

Now, being an extremely lazy person even at the best of times, I've taken to using this feature as my sole means of navigating the intertubes, simply because I can't be arsed going into my bookmarks or Googling directly. And indeed, this was perfectly well until just recently when DISASTER STRUCK! There I was, happily lazing away, when suddenly my URL bar took me not to the desired page, nor even to a standard Google search, but instead to this horrendously garish mockery of outdated web design:



Sickening, no? Well, I ended up vomiting there and then. Now, much as pro tips on 'getting into bars' may well have proven extremely useful in my younger youth when such places were heavenly hoardings of forbidden fruit, this is something which I could quite easily have found myself had I been allowed proper use of the URL bar. But no! TalkTalk seem to feel that the URL bar wasn't helpful enough when it simply redirected me to the desired page, and so they've decided that as of now they're going to quite literally steal the internet request out of Firefox's hands and drag me by the scruff of my neck down to their internet marketing brothel to peruse their irrelevant sponsored results. And as marketing brothels go, this one's extremely down-market. The logo, for one thing, is ridiculous. It seems to vaguely resemble a Christmas tree which some imbecile has painted in various different colours before crushing, eating and regurgitating. Or something like that.

So, was Animatinator going to stand for this? Pah! Not he, not I, not anyone! So, after much perusing of the net (stealthily using the normal Google search engine whilst the TalkTalk guards were facing elsewhere), I've discovered that you can actually solve this problem by changing to a different DNS server address ([Start->Control Panel->Network and Internet->View network status and tasks->Change adapter settings->{right-click on your internet connection}->Properties->Internet Protocol Version 4->Properties] in Windows 7). The ones everyone seems to recommend are two Google ones: 8.8.8.8 (which unfortunately didn't work for me) and 8.8.4.4 (which did work). Basically, switching to one of these takes a knife to TalkTalk's (or whichever other oppressive, tyrannical ISP regime you subscribe to) slimy grip on the Firefox URL bar, leaving you free to exercise laziness at will!

And that, my friends, is the tale of my war with URL-bar-hackery. Goodnight!

Saturday 15 May 2010

Hello again!

Just thought I'd drop in with a surprise update. Yep, I still remember this blog! Even after all these months of separation, myself and blogging remain as firm a couple as, well, myself and laziness. The latter pairing being the reason for the colossal temporal disparity between the then and now; the there and here; the last delivered update from myself, and this current literary phlegm. Essentially. So, to bring to a close this travesty of prefacing text, I'd best draw from my dunce cap some form of excuse for the atrocity of negligence committed over the past few months. Basically, I was busy. Exams, coursework, the traditional crud. That and I suffered from the sheer abject laziness to which I am so oft prone.

But that isn't to say that I have done nothing in the way of ExeSoft-ery. No, not so! I have various things which still await posting, which with any luck will find their way onto this very blog over the next few posts (which will presumably come with fewer gargantuan time gaps of the nature we have just witnessed). Unfortunately I can't at present divulge the secrets of these mysterious projects, as I actually can't remember which ones I've already posted about. It's been a while. But as mentioned, I intend to sort this out fairly soon and get some posts up here. For now I'll just be updating you on things you don't care about, in a writing style which has most evidently degraded over the last few months (during which the closest to prose my writing got was formulaic English essays and the odd explanation paragraph in physics exams).

So, what do my near-nonexistent audience care the least about? Aah yes, my banal excuses. Exams! Doesn't everyone love them? Well, I'm sitting them at the moment. (It may well be that my reason for posting here was simply that my mouse-operating hand was bored of drifting over to Tetris during revision sessions, and thought it would spice things up with a bit of bloggery.) And I'm pleased to say that having sat the English exam on Wednesday, I am now free from studying English... forever. Yes, that's right. Nevermore need I ponder the elaborate subtexts present in such poetic masterpieces as Carol Ann Duffy's '$':
A one a two a one two three four - boogie woogie chou chou cha cha chatta noogie. Woogie wop a loo bop a wop bim bam. Da doo ron a doo ron oo wop a sha na? Na na hey hey doo wah did. Um, didy ay didy shala lala lala lala, boogie woogie choo choo cha cha bop. (A woogie wop a loo bam) yeah yeah yeah.

(I shit thee not, this is genuinely one of her poems. I imagine the only 'meaning' present here is in the title - basically, "I can write whatever bollockery I like and the cash will continue to roll in.") Indeed, I need never actually write
anything properly again. I am now free to allow my literary mind to decay, to the stage where I find difficulty even to write code coherently.

But alas, this cannot be! As the greatly revered Animatinator, I feel it is my duty to maintain my magnificent writing capabilities, and to continue this glorious and majestic blog indefinitely, so that you, my adoring fans, can continue to bask in this... this paragon of literary achievement, this grand summit of intellectual mastery, and so that we, as a species, can take heed of the great words set down herein and move forwards unto a new era, a new paradigm, an entirely new... means of existence, in which...
...
Sorry, I tried incredibly hard, but I couldn't get any further with that without descending into fits of hilarity. See? I'm already losing my writing abilities. I can't even impersonate Carol Ann Duffy any more. But nonetheless, I will continue to post to this blog, despite there being no reason whatsoever to maintain my capacity for language. Because that's how nice I am.

So, where was I? Ah yes, boring you with tales of exams. English went well! Surprisingly, we had an incredibly good question on the Pinter texts (the main thing our class was studying) so I didn't have to resort to prescribing contrived meaning to the semi-literate blabberings of good old Duffy (our back-up). And the resulting essay seemed at least reasonably acceptable. So, given that the dissertation went well and the two creative pieces should average an A, I'm still hopeful for an overall A (and consequently a met Cambridge offer). All the other exams are still to come though, so there's still scope for abject failure. I'll endeavour to keep you posted.

And with that, I shrink back into my pit of silence. Goodbye for now! Perchance we shall meet again over the next few days...