raaa back online
Had loads of server difficulties.. I have apost to post so I'll go and fetch it. Kev and I are back in business :)
Admin Law
I just had my Administrative Law exam having spent the last two days solidly packing it into my head. I thought it went very well actually.
The topic I had prepared for for my essay question - Parliamentary Ombudsmen did come up, but the question was asking something completely obscure so I didn't want to risk answering it and turning up short.
However I glanced down and there was a question on a topic I hadn't concentrated on but which I had particular interest in, namely Proportionality. I only enjoy it because of the whole legalistic debate surrounding the issue and the question was basically about the opinion of the courts and the principles.. That was a piece of cake! Yum Yum in my Tum! My kinda Question :D Its a very interesting bit of law.
Dilemma
Ok so my dad's arriving tomorrow (woot!) so the family will all be together. However I'm meeting him at 6am at Heathrow airport which is about a 1 hour tube ride from the flat. What's worse is that it is currently 1 am. Do the math and I need to get up at 4 to leave at 5 to get to the station at 6. Which means I can either go to sleep now and get 3 hours sleep or just not sleep. Each side has its advantages and disadvantages.. No wait.. They just had disadvantages and so I have to weigh those up.
1) If I go to sleep now I'll have that whole "having to wake yourself up early before you have had enough sleep" thing.. You know what I mean, its the worst thing in the world. When you're curled up under your duvet you are as content as could be. I mean you could have Sara Michelle Geller next to you in a thong but at 6am even her pneumatic figure couldn't convince you that she was better than the warmth of your bed and what is worse is that not only are you leaving immense comfort but your exchanging it for the worst feeling in the world! Nothing sucks more than that 'so not awake' feeling. Especially as a student
2) However if I don't sleep I'll end up having to nap this afternoon because I want to go to the cinema to watch The Matrix Reloaded with my mates tomorrow evening. Which means I miss some quality time with Dad which I would still get in the car but anyhow.
Well I think what I'll do is I'll go to sleep now because to be honest I'm falling down on my feet because I didn't get enough sleep last night. Then I'll kick my ass at 4am and drink 2 cups of espresso and grab my stuff for the tube journey.. Then I might have another nap in the car and just sleep when I get home as it will still be morning :D Technically :D
Right that's settled it. I've put the dishwasher on so I can get another load in before I leave (Stupid thing isn't made to take certain shaped plates so you can't fit it all in) and I've put the rubbish out. Now all that remains is for me to go to sleep. Something I found hard last night but trust me, I have no difficulty with right now.
*yawn* May your own saturday morning be spent in bed :D
Later
John
Holiday!
Well I'm back from my weekend in Italy
Holiday Checklist:
Eat Spaghetti di Fruita di Mara [x]
Drink as much coffee as is humanly possible [x]
Stuff suitcase with enough food to solve ethiopian hunger [x]
Find beautiful Italian girl who also speaks english [-]
Improve Italian [x]
Get pressure coffee pot [x]
Thats about my holiday in a nutshell. Simply put it rocked and I now have a whole suitcase full of food to deliver to my family.
I also had an exam today. I had to wake myself up at 8 am to drag my ass to the library and slap myself around with books. Did a lot of slapping and reading and note-taking and the result was that I thought my exam went rather well :) Apart from one howler (I got one of the party names in a cited case wrong - Doh!) still they don't penalize you massively for that as you are still applying relevant law.
As the Apple Turns has been broadcasting solidly for the past few weeks now. For those who don't know this god-like site, its a sort of apple news/rumors comedy site and it is brilliant. Simply Side-Splittingly funny and is consistently so (indeed it has been for years and years now) well, apart from the hiatus the staff took after they had a baby, and then further vacations whilst they paraded the baby around the country and then slipped into a black hole or something for a few months. But anyhow its back and there is no sign of Jack Miller, its writer, letting up with sublime comedy and the ever brilliant VEVO poll. I read AtAT whilst I was at Shatin College as it used to be published about at first break. It was my favorite part of the day, just sitting down in the SSC and reading it laughing my ass off and then discussing it with fellow mac user and good friend Sean.
Speaking of which I haven't emailed him thanks to a brilliant combination of Exams and Holiday.
Oh and whilst on holiday my Zio Marzio brought out his air rifle. Now, despite having never even had gun toys before let alone held a rifle I managed to put 2 rounds through the centre of a target 30m away. The only reason I can give is that the sights on that rifle were identical to those on the french rifle in WWIIOL :) Yeah right Computer games don't train killers. I'm not saying they tell kids to kill people but they sure as hell teach them how to do it efficiently :D Hehehe!
On the subject of WWIIOL the impossible has happened! CRS has announced they are adding Italy to the game! Its incredible! I thought whining never got you anywhere but a truly colossal amount of it helped bring the Italian issue to the forefront of future development! Of course atm I'm more interested in Brigade spawning and Italian forces will probably mean I'll have to leave my group in order to fight for my flag so I don't want to rush it or anything right now :)
Anyhow I have people to email and places to be... And more importantly Law to revise :)
Later!
John
Loadsa stuff
Hiya
Had my moot today which was interesting. The case I was doing had me as the appellant and, well, it stunk. Not my moot though, I got a 2(1) (sadly not a 1st) but the case was a bitch.
First of all there was stacks of law. All against me. Then there was the complete lack of cases which supported my position because in truth it didn't have any previous manifestation in common law. I was flying by the seat of my pants.
Anyhow I beat my opponent, but lost to the judge :D
I asked afterwards if anyone had managed to put together a decent case for the appellant and was told mine was one of the few who actually managed to and even then I would describe my legal ground as "sucky". Still a 2(1) kicks ass considering the conditions although I would have liked a 1st
Xmen
Woot yeah! I watched me some Xmen when I got home. Accompanied by a Tuna+Olive oil über simple pasta I watched the whole of Season 1 of Xmen Evolutions (the newer cartoon series) and a few episodes of Season 2. It rocks, that could be because I'm an Xmen fan but its still great to get to watch that much quality entertainment in one go. Back to back.. Quality!
SHAZBOT
I just realized I didn't manage to finish my effing program of studies for year 2!! arrgh! I have to do that tomorrow which means I have to get up again early!! arrrgh! How flipping annoying!!! I had set aside the time but I forgot!!! I must have ended up going to get my contract book and forgetting about it!! Arrrrgh!!
Well that means I better get to sleep if Im going to get up and make an attempt to actually speak to someone who could sort it out.
Doh!
Later
John
baaaaad law!!
The case I'm doing for my moot has some hideous law to overcome. Really astonishingly bad decisions which I will be pleased to set right as the moot is set at a level of final appeal (the House of Lords) who can depart from previous decisions.
You might note I've redone the side bar so it has archives and also a few links. BlogApp which is the only decent blogging application on Mac OS X (it just does what its supposed to do) and it has a neat interface. A good application which I now use to both compose and post to the blog
There is also a link to Trapt's website where you can listen to the single "Headstrong" along with several others and indeed buy the album if you have a US credit card.
The newton links are gone because I don't feel the site really justifies being called a 'newton page' I mean sure I use my Newton a lot in life and it does get mentioned here but I'm probably not a 'Newton Webpage'. That doesn't diminish at all from my love for Denning the MP2100 though :) He'll be an essential part of my mooting arsenal tomorrow :)
My massive download is 4 hours 20 minutes from completion.
I told my friend Conrad about the whole torrent thing and the prospect of all that Xmen was just too much to resist so I got him to download and install the tiny helper application to let him download the monstrous cartoon file.
He was initially complaining that it was quite slow as I said it would be at the beginning so I told him to leave it to its own devices and so after about an hour he popped back onto MSN and said this:
Conrad: eek it did become a torrent and all John: Lol Conrad: I shouldn't've turned off my monitor John: told you :D Conrad: there may be a deaning occurring after my hour of 150k/s downloading :P John: hahaha John: Quality Conrad: and 60k uploading Conrad: oops John: hahahaa John: I did say :D John: Brilliant little application Conrad: it's 8% done now... and yes, you were quite right ;) Conrad: have had to cut it off for the mo John: :) to save your bandwidth allowance eh? Conrad: yeah, well it's not all that formal is the problem, so I just have to be careful John: hehe
150k/s?? I get 56k/s and I'm happy! That's why people with bigass broadband connections love it, most commercial servers just wont let you monopolize on bandwidth like that because it saps from other users but using torrent you get your file from as many other users as you can fit onto your pipe - and you can fit a lot with his University JNET connection, only he has a bandwidth restriction so he has to restrict it to hour long periods with breaks :D
Time to finish off my cranberry juice :)
Later
John
*yawn* Morning
Well I set up a bit-torrent download overnight for every episode of the Xmen cartoon ever and it's 2.4 gigs so Its only half the way through and still going.
Actually its only Series 1 2 and 3 but that is a whole lot of Xmen cartoon :)
I am still addicted to Trapt. I got an email from their sales staff saying it won't be released in England for at least a few months, which sucks but I get to preach their greatness for a bit still and feel smug about having found a cool group.
Listening to the tracks more and more you can get a sense of their great range. There are parts which have influences from 80's rock/pop (still frame) and 90's guitar rock ballads (Echoes). Complete with their more angsty single Headstrong which really can't be considered an indicator of their album's content. A superb single but it might make people think they are just some lame metal band which they aren't.
Right time to work on criminal liability
More Later,
John
iTunes Music Store
It continues to taunt me, its so well executed, easy to navigate, powerful and just a cool place to play around in if you have the connection for it. But it needs US credit cards to buy songs!!! arrrgh! I want my Michelle Branch / Sugar Ray prerelease and stuff! I mean it even introduced me to a superb band under the "up and coming" artists section - Trapt. I downloaded the whole album for a listen and it is seriously good. A mix of the heavy rock which can be satisfying at times but with melody and soul. Good lyrical content and stuff you can listen to.
I have an odd relationship with hard rock/metal. I love System of a Down. Their work is intelligent musically varied and it is actually thought provoking with lots of political/social commentary. However the friend who introduced me to them also thinks highly of a band called "il nino" who are incorrigibly shit. They are a metal band who are loud and try to write interesting lyrics which just sound like trite and simplistic anti-consumerism. Its angst for the sake of angst and 2 dimensional. In fact I've listened to loads of metal thanks to Ben but only SOAD is any good.
So when I heard hard rock done well again in Trapt's self-titled album I was really drawn in. This album is definitely next on the buy list and would be mine but for its lack of UK release and my acute lack of funds.
I've also ran out of room on my iPod. I've had to delete crappy songs which really weren't supposed to be on my mac but I had forgotten to delete after I had used them. Anyhow I'm back onto the 159 megs free-zone so I'm alright for the moment but I could sure use one of the new iPods.. Mmm.. New iPod :) Maybe if I win the lottery I'll treat myself.
Anyhow - Check them out! Superb Band and a brilliant album www.trapt.com
Stupidity Strikes
I managed to leave the one file I needed for my day of sitting on my ass at home studying at university! Argh! What's worse is that I had actually photocopied the paper I needed in case of just such a situation but I had both in the file haha!
So I had to go into Uni just to pick up the file, still I would have had to anyway as I got the details for my moot but I would have done it tomorrow and slept some more this morning :)
By far one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen
I just found this thing called "torrent" which has been around for over a year now and it is so brilliant I can hardly believe.
Basically BitTorrent is a way to relieve server stress by getting users to be servers themselves. What happens is that when you connect to a torrent download Torrent sends you 1 'chunk'. It sends chunks of files to all the downloading users. Then the users upload the chunks from each other. So what you get is at first a slow download and then a massive flood as you grab the chunks you need from different sources whilst the server load is dramatically decreased. Its an incredible idea and the sheer implementation of it is a mindbogling affair but it works!
Just think about what went through this guys head! I mean he must have sat there seeing about 50 people downloading a file from a server and thought "Damn, think of all that upload bandwidth that is going unused" and then he must have spent ages thinking about how to harness it and -bam- idea of the year :)
Of course the massive irony is that the more users who are ON torrent the faster the download is!!
Right time for some more research and listening to Trapt.
Later
John
Fuming....
I just caught what I assumed would be a bit of a laugh on CH4. "The 100 Worst Britons" (which some might remember I actually voted for). Instead of a light-hearted bit of satire I was greeted by a collection of barbarous jabs at as many celebrities as was humanly possible. In particular, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who received the ignoble "worst briton" award.
I think my opinions are best stated in the letter I have just written to The Times newspaper on the subject:
Yours Faithfully
John Swaine
What else was particularly sickening was, upon consultation of opinion of those who chose Tony Blair, Michael Moore a normally intelligent fellow expressed his own opinion that Tony Blair was the Worst Briton.
I cannot begin to describe the disgust that heaved in my chest upon hearing those words.
For those of you who do not know Michael Moore he is a satirical film maker and writer with Left-Wing ideals. His latest book "Stupid White Men" is a fantastic assault on the Conservative elements of the christian right of American politics. However when I read that book a few things stood out. Firstly he wasn't terribly well versed in the manner in which the United Kingdom was constructed constitutionally, nor was he aware of anything remotely specific in the field of UK politics. One other important facet of his character that one gleaned (with little difficulty) was his passionate burning hatred of the man so much of the rest of the world despises, George W Bush.
I fundamentally believe that it was this detestation of Bush that led him to such vitriolic heights at the Academy Awards this year (in fact his rhetoric during his acceptance was clear evidence of this) and through this he was led to his hatred of Mr. Blair.
The Right Hon. Tony Blair PM/MP, who's policies and indeed WHO'S ACTIONS are so absolutely parallel to his own beliefs that they would void any question of political animosity.
Mr Moore it is that knee-jerk hostility which looses you my respect. Perhaps you were not aware of the nature of the interview. This seems unlikely as the your answer gave note of the question!
"Who is my worst Briton? Tony Blair is my worst briton"
There are only 2 possible explanations that my brain can entertain.
The first is absolute ignorance. A complete and comprehensive lack of knowledge of the political entity that is Tony Blair save his support for military action in Iraq such that the only known facet of his beliefs happens to be in direct parallel with George W Bush leading to this dislike.
The second is a far more heinous possibility. He is acutely aware of Mr Blair's policies but is content to dislike him in spite of this purely in submission to his vehement hatred of all things Bush related. If this is the case then the man has proved himself an intellectual bantam weight and a slave to his 'faith'.
I retire now to bed, I have just received the email confirming my letter's receipt at The Times and if it is printed I will receive a further phone call. I sincerely hope it is.
Later
John
My ICQ Name
Yes it is mispelt incase you were wondering, I started it ages ago when I first posted on a UO Drachensfels Forum at uo.stratics.com and I became a 'regular' on the board, I think I probably spent more time there than I actually did playing UO :)
Anyhow I met Kevlar when he was playing UO and so I'm known as "Neff" to most UO folks and I never saw fit to change my name as it became an effective part of me :)
eBay madness
I think the following chat transcript between myself and Kevlar of Kebeol.net (and indeed Plastic-Rabbit) fame can sum this whole thing up:
Yep, I finally have (or will have when it gets delivered) a MyTV Tuner Box for my mac! And what's more a less than half price tuner box!! £52!! I still can't believe it!
In the words of the inimitable Dean Martin:
"I couldn't feel any better or I'd be sick"
Woot! That was what I wanted for my birthday and its great that I managed to get my #1 present in the end :) (Not to take anything away from the superb home-decorated T-Shirts I got from my siblings which made my dad's absence easier to bare :) )
Lawww!!
I spent all of wednesday sitting in the library researching for some Criminal Law paper I have to write. Its quite straightforward but its still a time eater and then I have my moot to prepare for which is on Thursday (mwahaha, take no prisoners :D)
I also have the last of the contracts for Kris to finish off and then she might want to hire me to write the company Handbook (which I entrenched in the contract as much as was possible in an effort to create what I call the "Bulletproof Company" effect) so this weekend is going to be fuuuuuntastic.
Finally I want to go and watch a film with my friends tomorrow as otherwise I won't see them for another week (2p Italy trip next weekend remember? :D).
Oh the busy week of a student hehe. Almost makes you forget that I would easily sleep for 12 hours a day if nothing stopped me :)
Later!
John
Research!!!
Ack!!
Library: "All your soul are belong to us"
Me: "Doh!"
Yes its that time again, the time when I spend half an hour scooping up all the abstracts of legal journal articles relevant to my topic from Westlaw.co.uk* that I can and go to the library to read them all.
I have more coursework to get done and this one is actually a bit more in depth because its commenting on an area of law, not just advising someone about how to sue someone else for half their stuff.
This time I shoved all the contacts and all the other research I had done without consulting actual paper (Westlaw's case comments) into my Newton. If you remember I bought Denning my beloved Newton Messagepad 2100 because I had done that huge Research-o-rama using conventional pen and paper (god no!!!) and had decided that a newton would really speed things up. Well I suddenly thought "ok so how the hell do I get the text I've written on my comp onto the newton.
I searched and searched and searched. What I found were ways using terminal emulation programs and soup data (nasty!). Then I noticed a superb feature of a superb application I found online. Its called Escale and it uses the Newton Desktop Libraries to create a Newton Desktop Syncing application which also uses OS 10.2 Rendevous technology to make the networking slick and efficient. It has a "Use the mac keyboard on the newton over a serial connection" feature. This means what I type on my mac into this program can feed onto my newton as if the keyboard was connected to it. So I copied the HUUUUGE chunk of text and pressed Command-V (paste) for a laugh to see if it would work.. And do you know the bugger actually did!! It sat for a while and I thought I'd either done nothing or overloaded it and suddenly it started pasting page after page of text into the notepad! Sorted!
Anyhow I churned out the first of the contracts for my new job-thingy. Which means I'll be getting some cash.. Ooh yeah :) that £60 is gonna be sooo good for this destitute student :)
And I was planning to save it up so I could buy this MyTV tuner thing for my mac so I can watch TV whilst I surf and record shows and more importantly never leave my room and have to face my grandmother (apart from when she forcibly walks in and starts talking to you) except for meals and going to the lav. Mwahaha!
Anyhow I was looking on eBay randomly and what do you know! There it was in an auction with only 2 days left! going for £40!! My bid is in and hopefully seeing as the buyer is some re-saler I might be able to grab my desired item on the cheap!! Happy day!
Right, sleep for me so that I can research tomorrow!
Later
John
Good thing it wasn't the fish!
Yep I have once again given into watching my favourite film You've Got Mail. It shares this spot with "La Vita e Bella" but I can't watch that film as it is totally heart rending and YGM is quite simply the most soulful, beautiful and brilliant film ever produced. You can literally drink in the cinematography.
Anyhow I was moping around feeling a bit down so I popped the DVD in the drive and am currently watching it whilst I type this.
Lee popped over this afternoon which was nice. As I'm obliged to find student accommodation for next year and nearly all such accommodation is for groups of students I'll probably end up staying somewhere with Lee and some other folks, truth be told I get on very well with him. Its just a matter of making sure the place we stay (probably a larger place than just a flat given that there are 4 of us) is kept in decent order as opposed to falling into the slum-like state which is common in student abodes. Plus home networking - Can you say "ROXXORS"?
Fantastically Kris, a friend of the family has just asked me to draft a load of employment contracts for her, which means that I get paid for something legal. Thats right, its my first Legal work! Woot! Plus its actual money. I really need some of that :) I have -zero- casholla at the moment, well... Almost, I think I have about £50 to my name, its probably closer to £30 now and I have a train fare to pay so, yah I have no money :)
I was going to go back to colchester today (thursday) but thanks to the whole 'may day' thing going on in London I really don't want to bother with the transport which will be stuffed beyond reckoning.
Anyhow I'll be heading back tomorrow, or today as the clocks would have it.
I think I'll finish watching my film and perhaps grab some nutella bread or something before hitting the sack.
Later!
John