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Pride 9 July 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in Out and About.
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On Saturday me, C and several friends went to watch Pride. I was a little bit iffy about going in the morning because it was rather wet and cloudy, but luckily it cleared up and became quite nice and sunny and reasonably warm. Which of course meant I had to take some suntan lotion with me, as I tend to burn in the sun. So after managing to meet up with everyone, and then finding a reasonably good spot to stand in on Regent Street, we waited for the parade.

Here are a couple of pictures, first one is the Amnesty International Float, bearing what I thought to be some good words of wisdom and an important message.

Next we have “Amy Winehouse”, in fact there were several “Amy Winehouse’s” I wonder if its because she’s been in the news a ‘little’ bit? ;)

Environment Agency… Green’s the theme.

I do not want to know how heavy those wigs must have been, nor how hot!

And finally, not only must that have been an uncomfortably hot and heavy costume, but it was also windy, not seconds after this photo the two people on either side had to help pull him forward because he couldn’t move due to the gust of wind!

In fact the wind had fun with several peoples attempts at holding banners, sometimes they just couldn’t move forward. It also made me laugh that the Police only brought a crappy white transit with just Police written on the front of it for their part in the parade, whereas the Fire brigade brought a fire truck. I think we know who wins there for coolness factor. :P It was also amusing that a part of the scenery for the Civil Service truck fell off, I’m sure it doesnt’ represent anything.. not really. ;)

I had a good time at Pride, my one complaint however is that its just starting to get too long, it took an hour for the whole parade to go past. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that long a few years ago. Now don’t’ get me wrong, I’m glad that people/charities/companies want to take part in pride but at the same time, an hour’s a long time.

Pleasently Surprised.. 1 July 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in University.
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Or perhaps I should say ecstatic?

I just checked my universities on-line system to see my final module results and.. Well. I actually saw some of them last week but they weren’t all up, now they are. And well, I think you can guess that I’m pretty damn pleased with them!  My worst exam was Database Administration (in the 50%s) however every other module I seem to have done amazingly well on, (above 70%)(Well ok Java was 69% but still, it really pulled my mark up for that considering I did so badly on the very first in class test). So yes I am really quite quite happy! :)

Now all that’s left is to get my project done, (I do hope we get a marking scheme for that, as it would help).

Heheh, ahh gosh this MSc, which has been such hard work, is nearly done!! Just gota pull it together with this project, and start job hunting. Phew.

Walking, walking… and.. more walking 16 June 2008

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So yesterday, me, C and two of my friends E and  A, went to have a picnic at Grafham Waters, (It’s up near Cambridge). The plan was to have a picnic and to go for short walk. The weather was a bit overcast when we got there, but we sat by the lake, 3 of us enjoying bread, humous and some really yummy bread that has haloumi inside of it. I shall have to see if I can find somewhere that makes that near me, it was damned tasty! My friend A is on something called a Cambridge diet, and so couldn’t eat what the rest of us were eating, although he did steal a few bits of bread.

After lunch we decided to go on a walk, E said that the lake was only 7km in circumference, that’s just under 4 and a 1/2 miles, it shouldn’t take us too long to walk all the way around it. So we started out in high spirits, the sun had come out by now and it was pretty warm, and the butterflies, dragonflies and flies were now out in force. About a 1/3 of the way around we made a pit stop for Ice Cream (or at least some of us did) , this was about an hour or so from when we had started out. So we headed on again, we got another 1/3 of the way around before the trouble began. The path began to diverge away from the lake, (well should call it Waters really?) the ordinance survey map E had wasn’t much use as it looked like the bike track we were following diverged quite far away from the lake, nor were the ANY helpful signs to indicate how far it was now to well.. anywhere.  So we wondered along, knowing WHERE the lake was but not seeing it, and being very unsure as just how far we had to go. Time passed, we’d set out at 2ish, and it was now around 5ish. From E’s map it looked like the walkers path deviated from the cycle path at one point to go directly towards where we wanted to go (namely the car park where the car was), so we followed one path hopefully. We saw a rabbit, a deer (which looked quite small, possibly a Muntjac, maybe a Chinese water deer but.. honestly  I’ve no idea) and then we turned a corner and there was, what was propably a birdwatchers hut in the way. Great. So we turned around, took a side path and hit the cycle path again.

After a couple of short cuts we eventually managed to SEE the lake again, and wonder of wonders walk beside it, also amazingly we saw other walkers (and not just cyclists). Thank goodness! We were no longer semi lost, but still we were still a mile or so from the car, at least we knew how to get there now though. We eventually made it back to the car by 6.15pm. And promptly took a good long swig of water from the bottle E had left in the car. (We’d all finished the actual bottles of water we’d taken with us quite a while ago.)

So we managed to survive that adventure, and we figure that we walked about 10 miles in total, having a look at the map later, we worked out that the circumference of the lake is at least 9km, and we did have to walk wide of it at some points. Also a 4 hour walk isn’t a terrible thing, BUT when your not prepared for it, and aren’t sure just how much longer the walk back to the car will be, then.. well its *sigh* I can’t think of an appropriate word, but I’m sure you get my drift.

Anyway have just found a recipe for Haloumi bread, I may well have to try it out at somepoint! :)

Geeky ramblings 9 June 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in Entertainment, Gaming, TV.
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I went to Leicester with C this weekend to meet up with a friend to celebrate her birthday, much geeky talk and fun was had. :) My friend is doing a Phd at Leicester uni, and was doing a shared bday meal on the Saturday with a friend from Leicester uni’s role-play society, and then the RP soc had their geek ball on the Sunday. And I’m really too tired to write anything really coherent about what we got up to, we ate food, met up with fun people, went to a ball, that about sums it up. The rest of this post is on rather geeky stuff, I didn’t intend to write a long post, but I do seem to have generated one all the same. :)

D&D 4th ed came out, and on the Sat, my friend’s bf bought a copy of the players guide, over the weekend we all had a look through, and we all decided that it was rather sterile and not very interesting. They’ve changed the races, half-orcs are out and dragon kind (kin?) are in, ok so I find that kind of cool, I do like dragons after all. But then flicking through to some of the other races, there are Eldaren (sp?) AND Elves, and to be honest there isn’t really that much different about then, hmm ok the eyes for both races might have been ever so slightly different but not much. Now I’m not an elf hater like a few people I know, but still Eldaren, Elves and half elves? It’s just getting silly.

And the classes? they’ve thrown out many of the interesting ones, no more druid, or bard and just introduced more combat type classes, and a slightly new type of arcane magic user class. In fact everything is MUCH more combat based, theres no more summoning, illusion, enchantment or necromancy. In fact speaking of necromancy, there is nothing that allows players to be even a little evil, everything is aimed at players having to be good people.

Also there is no more negatives, everything gives bonuses with bigger numbers, so no more ‘lows’ for players. Generally speaking we realised that it is basically an MMO but for a pen’n'paper game. C and my friend’s bf finally decided that the only thing 4th ed would be good for would be a tactical squad based war game, where each player would command their own squad exploring dungeons. Cause otherwise for a role playing game, it does feel rather sterile.

So I guess if I do play d&d, and lets be honest I’m not a big fan of d&d, although I was looking forward to 4th ed, it did sound like it had some good stuff, but as you can probably tell I’m not very impressed with it, but yes if I do play d&d I think I will stick to 3.5. :)

Also got discussing with my friend and another friend who came for the geek ball too about whether I should try and re-ignite my Stargate Sg-13 game. Then I moved on to say maybe I could run a Buffy related game instead, and the idea of BuffyGate came up. I’m really not sure who came up with the idea first, but anyway my two friends and C all seem to think that some crazy Buffy and Stargate crossover would be a good idea(?!) I’m really not sure how it would work, have an SG team with a slayer(s) in it? Make hellmouths into some strange type of stargate? Um.. hmm no, I really don’t think I want to try and make that work. C thinks I lack imagination because of that :P.

Although it reminds me that after reading the Fray comic it did make me wonder a few things. And to warn you up coming is a bit/rather spoilerish for season 7 of Buffy but anyway. Assuming the end of Buffy doesn’t happen, and there is still only just 1 slayer… or.. two? Because in s7 they do go on about how Buffy dying will trigger the next slayer, but isn’t Faith supposed to be the ‘current’ slayer.. so maybe there are two lines of slayers now, but anyway I digress from the point I wanted to discuss. Assume there is only 1 slayer, what happens when humanity gets to that point where they have space travel, and colonies on other worlds etc. What happens then? Do other worlds have hellmouths to spawn demons etc? Or are there only such things on worlds where life has spawned (and not worlds which have been terraformed?). What would the slayer do if there were? Or would it only be Earth? And if so would that mean that the Slayer would never be allowed to leave Earth?

And obviously this got me to wondering what aliens do, I mean do aliens have their own type of vampires & demons (or because demons tend to come from another plane of existence, could not the same demonic race inhabit other alien worlds?) and if aliens do have such things, how do they combat them? Their own slayer types? Or some kind of Initiative type? What? It does make me wonder.

The love affair resumes 4 June 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in Knitting.
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So several posts ago I mentioned that I was finding knitting Laminaria time consuming and well was causing my right hand to hurt, and wasn’t looking forward to knitting more with it at the time. However for the last few days I’ve picked this up again and by doing about 2-4 rows a day I’ve now got just 2 repeats left of the blossom chart left before I do the edging. Therefore me = mega excited.

Look! Isn’t she beautiful?

laminaria3

Well not quite beautiful yet, she’s at that cutsey you know she’ll be beautiful when she grows up stage. She still makes me go squee, especially when I think about how much this shawl will open up when its blocked. (You need to imagine the green as a lot  darker than it looks in the picture.) So yes I am again in love with this shawl, well to be honest I never fell out of love with the shawl, I just fell out of love with knitting it, but that is now no longer the case. :)

It’s funny how I started working on this again once the top I was working on got to the awkward stage. I have to join the front and back piece together to knit in the round, but first I need to make sure both are the same size, and I’ve already got a fair few ends that need to be sewn in later too.  Ahh the Mistresses of Knitting are fickle.

And finally I was making scrambled eggs for lunch and look:

Two yokes in one egg

2 Yokes in 1 Egg, according to C this is supposed to represent.. something? Possibly Good Luck?

Also am I sad for taking pictures of that? :P

My Prince Returns 4 June 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in Gaming.
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*drool*

(I think his hair looks silly thou… )

Project Proposal Relief 2 June 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in University.
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Phew!! Well that’s a weight off my mind! I got an email saying the results of the Project Proposal were out, and I must say I don’t think I’ve felt so stressed about looking at a mark for a long while. A lot was riding on this, I had to pass it to be able to do my project. I was hoping to get enough to pass, (50) I was not however expecting the result I got. 70(!) that was a shock and a huge relief to the system. Now.. well now I guess it’s time I think about getting focus on this project, that’s all I have left. (Well am still waiting for the results of 5 pieces of coursework and apparently I don’t get exam results till end of July!!)

Done! 30 May 2008

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So yesterday I had my last exam!! (Maybe my last exam ever? Although I thought that when I finished my undergrad degree, and it turned out to not be the case.) I’m glad thats all over now, now I just have to do my project and I’m done. Quite relieve that the majority of the stuff is over though, although I’m not quite sure just how much the project counts towards my final grade. :/

So as my last exam finished at 12pm, yes its an odd time considering that all my lectures and other exams were at 6pm, but that’s because a partner college in Sri Lanka was doing the same exam. After that was done I met up with C and we hit Oxford street. I did have reasonably grand plans of getting some new shoes, a dress, a bag, a book and a game, alas the trip was not so successful. I couldn’t find the Agile Web Development book for Ruby on Rails in Borders, so looks like I may have to get it off Play.com. And alas the dress and bag I had liked didn’t look as good in real life, ah well no biggy, saved me a bit of money its not like I needed them. I did however invest in some sandals, (2 pairs in fact), and it seems like my feet have shrunk, I know that you can go slightly smaller with sandals but usually I’d get a 6, not a 5 1/2.

And then I did a silly thing, I bought Portal, now don’t get me wrong I really want to play this game, but I sort of thought I didn’t want to bother getting the Orange Box, because well I’m not too interested in playing Team Fortress 2, and someone already gave me their Half Life 2 and Half Life Ep1 from the Orange Box so I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it. But then I do want to play Half Life ep 2 and I remembered (after I’d purchased Portal) that the Orange Box also has Peggle Extreme in it, and currently its only £24 on Amazon, soo when you consider I’d get 3 games, and would probably have tried Team Fortress 2, then I really should have gotten it. Well no problem, I thought to myself, I haven’t opened the packaging on Portal I can just return it to HMV.

So that’s what I went to do today. Or tried to. Apparently HMV only do exchanges on unopened PC games. Joy. And unsurprisingly my local (rather small) HMV did NOT have the Orange Box available. Thus I am now presented with 2 options.

  1. I trek to Oxford Street (30 min journey) and attempt to exchange my copy of Portal for a copy of the Orange Box (price £30).
  2. I give/sell Portal to someone else, and buy the Orange Box of Amazon.

Hmmm. :/ Really not sure. 1 is cheaper but its a little bit of a hassle JUST to exchange a game. :(

Ugh so anyway back to yesterday, I decided that going shopping after you’ve had an exam really isn’t a good idea, its really exhausting! I was wiped out by the time I got home, couple that with the fact that I haven’t been sleeping too good for the last few days. Oh well maybe now exams are done I can sort that out.

In other news I did get a hair cut today. Yays! It is now jaw length, and layered (I have thick, curly hair, I have to have it layered otherwise it just goes all poofy. So now it is funky and short, although the hair dresser did decide to do weird things when finishing up, it was going curly and he decided to straighten the very front bits but to leave the back curly. Very strange. Ah well I do intend to dye it purple over the weekend (hopefully).

And finally my new keyboard did arrive.  Although the size of the box it arrived in did amuse me, especially when compared with the size of the box for the keyboard.  It was all taken up with those fancy bag’s of air. :) I took a pic of it against my old keyboard too,  the size difference doesn’t look too bad (its barely noticeable in some ways). And hopefully you can’t see how dirty my old keyboard is either! :) Keyboard & Packaging

Eurovision 25 May 2008

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Ahh Eurovision, a night of pure cheese maybe but I do enjoy it (most of it at least). Watching some of the silly songs and crazy lyrics is always good for a laugh. And actually, despite what I think I said in a previous post, when I listened to the UK entry compared to some of the others *cough* Latvia, Spain, Russia *cough* to name but a few, we had an all right entry. So Latvia had some pirates singing about how they are going to take Eurovision, Spain had the most bizzare song about a dance called the ChikiChiki, Russia had some awful ‘power’ ballad type thing, Germany’s entry sounded off key, France had some guy singing in English about Chivers (??), and Bosnia Herzegovina had some wired song where the backing singers pulled out large knitting needles near the end and pretended to knit. There were a couple of songs I thought were quite good, Azerbaijan had a pretty decent song for their first ever Eurovision, Finland going with power metal again, I enjoyed Turkey’s too.

Still, as per usual, the worst bit of the night was the political voting, its got even worse in the last few years I think. It used to be that only the countries competing on the night voted,which was usually around 20-25 countries, then whoever came last got relegated and wouldn’t be allowed to compete next year, giving someone else a chance. Except for when the UK came last, they couldn’t relegate us because along with Spain, France and Germany we put the most money into the event. Now however, there are two semi finals before the final everyone (43 countries this year), except the UK, France, Germany, Spain and the winner of last years contest (I think that’s it) competes and then on the night of the final 25 countries compete. But all 43 countries get to vote at the end, it just means that the political voting has much more of an affect than it used to.

I mean Iceland and Denmark trading 12 points, Spain and Portugal, pretty much all the Baltic & Scandinavian states giving Russia 12, and I’m pretty sure that, these days, even if the UK sent a truly awesome song that could be number one for weeks, we would still get f-all points. (Thou thanks to San Marino and Ireland for at least giving us some points so we didn’t have nil. We still came last though, along with Germany and Poland. Yes that’s right Spain’s truly dire song got a hell of a lot more points than us, I’m sort of of the opinion that Spain and quite probably France and Germany just don’t really care any more (because of the political voting)? I’m pretty sure Spain had a really odd entry 2 years ago too. (I missed last years Eurovision).)

Do I sound like a sore loser? Maybe. But you know it’s tiring and BORING watching the same thing happen every year. Oh look every one is giving all the high points to the countries they are nearest to. There’s no tension, no excitment over who might win, there were occasions a few years ago where the voting used to be tight, it would go down to the last few votes.. but not these days. Russia made a killing with the points this year.

Its just depressing. Why do I keep watching it then? Year after year?

Oh yeah.. cause you get a right laugh at some of the crazy/stupid songs that are there! I should learn to turn it off when the voting starts. :)

Moving & other things 23 May 2008

Posted by kaitharshayr in Computer, University.
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I’d forgotten how exhausting moving, even just a small move, can be. Wednesday I helped C move what small amount of stuff out of the place he was renting to my house. It was no where near an epic move, hell I did that EVERY time I went back to uni, that was epic, I had so much stuff that I filled my dad’s Peugeot Estate! I mean everything I had was kind of ‘necessary’ I had my PC, base unit, monitor, speakers, printer, then my tv, game cube, and of course a bag of dvd’s/game cube games. A suitcase with clothes, another with sheets, pillows etc. A bag with text books and folders of notes, a bag of living essentials, washing up liquid, washing machine powder, extension cords, a mirror.. etc. And of course my 2 potted plants and bags of food… Gods that was a lot, somehow my friend, who had almost as much stuff as me, managed to fit everything in his mum’s car, which was a fair bit smaller than mine, it was most impressive.

But anyway I digress. C was renting somewhere which was only about a 5 min walk from where I live, its amazing how long that can feel when your weighed down with bags, it didn’t take that many trips though. A part of me thinks it would have been so much easier and quicker if my mum had brought her car around, it would have taken one trip, and she did offer. But then.. its ONLY 5 mins, and I’m hardly helping the environment if I use the car for such a short trip. Ah well.

As of today I have now completed 4 of my 5 exams, and last exam is next Thursday. It can’t come soon enough, I have decided to treat myself to a rather large shopping trip afterwards. (The benefit (or is a a curse?) of having a university near Oxford street.) There are some things I want to get from Marks and Spencers, and I need to get a book to teach me about Ruby on Rails. Its basically an open source frame work that allows you to develop database backed web applications. And from what I’ve seen of the tutorials and such it is supposed to be really easy to do as there is minimal coding involved, and is supposed to be easy to learn. So I’ve decided to learn. I just hope that one of the book shops on Oxford street has the book I want.

I have also finally decided on what keyboard I want. I think I mentioned ages ago in another blog post that I would invest in a new keyboard in the summer, well I am going to get one soon. I have to say it was a tough choice. Originally I was torn between the Logitech LX 710 Laser and the Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave. Both are cordless, and both came with mice, the former has more buttons functionality than the other, but the latter has that curvy look which is supposed to be better for people who get RSI, which I do occasionally.

So I thought it was a tough choice, and both were about the same price on Amazon so there wasn’t much in it.. until I stumbled on Logitech’s Gaming keyboards. Well that did it.. I wasn’t aiming to spend more than £40 maybe £50 on a keyboard. But then I saw these two. Logitech G11 Keyboard and the Logitech G15 Keyboard.  Now.. granted the G11 is JUST below £50, but it’s the G15 that is the neat one, and after reading a review that compared the new G15 with the old G15, it just sounds really neat, plus my friend has the old G15, and he says its pretty damn good. However unfortunately neither of these are wireless, nor do they come with mice, now to be far I wasn’t really looking for a new mouse, my basic Microsoft Optical one serves me fine. Plus my current basic keyboard is also wired, so it’s not going to make a huge difference to me, although the size might. For some silly reason the Logitech site doesn’t give you the dimensions of the keyboards, the G15 is 19.5″ long and 10.5″ wide, my current keyboard is 18″ by 7″ so its pretty big! At the moment I can push my keyboard up next to the monitor if I want to write note on to paper and such. I don’t think I’m quite going to have that luxury with this new keyboard, I’m also going to have fun when I want to break out my graphics tablet. I really wont’ have much room at all! But, I’m a gamer geek and well, it’s a gaming keyboard. I’ll figure something out!