JontySewell.net

As I lie writing this in bed it's quietly sleeting outside:- that rather mithy sludgy sleet that just makes everyone's morning commute miserable. This morning Dad left for work in the car, and then returned ten minutes later because the main road was at a complete standstill and he said there was no chance of anyone letting him in! He must have walked to work more times in the past week than in the preceding five years.

Seeing as I've got bored of sitting at home with nothing to do (well, lots to do but nothing to do, if you get what I mean. Gah, computing coursework due in five weeks!) I don't want any more blizzards or anything, but the snow that's already here can hang around for as long as it likes! OK, so perhaps some old people fall over and so on, but car usage must've halved over the past seven days. The answer to global warming is to make it very cold so it snows a lot, evidently.

It was review day at school today, which means me sitting down for 15 minutes with my form teacher and discussing where I am, where I should be and what my targets are etc. Then I get the rest of the day off!
I've decided the main thing that I need to concentrate on at the moment is finding something to do, well, with my life. I need something to aim at - a goal to achieve that isn't just "go to university". I thought I could narrow down my options a lot by choosing Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Computing but it turns out that there are so many options available that even after I take away 90% of them there's still heaps left. Of course I still have that lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut, but I doubt that's going to happen somehow.

My past self would probably die of shock and amazement at this, but recently I've been rather interested in the TV adverts for the Air Force. I've always liked the RAF more than the Army or the Navy because they're ostensibly the most technologically advanced force. I still don't particularly like war, but I certainly wouldn't be a soldier or a pilot or anything like that. I'd never make it through basic training! I'm more thinking of something like an IT person doing whatever it is their IT people do. I'll have to look it up more, of course.

Another possible direction I've suddenly noticed is that of audio/visual engineering. I've always been very interested in A/V systems in stadiums and so on, and particularly with the surprising effectiveness of the ad-hoc setup they use at Soul Survivor. Perhaps a career as someone who operates and maintains something like that? Or a sound engineer in a recording studio? I don't know. Whatever happens, I need to start making my mind up.

Perhaps I should learn Lua, as so far I've seen it used in everything from video games to home theaters. It seems rather versatile! That said, I just spent about 10 annoying minutes waiting for Garry's Mod to load, because of all the Lua addons I have installed. Oh well, it's my fault it takes that long!

We got another day off school today, which officially means this is the most snow I've ever had in my life. It's review day tomorrow, which means I only need to go in for a 9:30am appointment with my form tutor, but I plan on staying until lunchtime to work on Computing coursework. I hate working with databases via ADO.NET, by the way. Why can't I just assign a textbox to a variable and then save that into a table field?! It has to be all complicated with connection strings and SQL and data adapters and so on.

EDIT: I should really fix the thing that makes automatic URL aliases from /node/number to /blog/title as well.
Also, Twitter is going nicely!

I've decided to make a new years' resolution to blog more frequently. I'm also going to sort out this Twitter nonsense, ever since I read about Stephen Fry Twittering his way out of a broken lift. I think of lots of random things, and Facebook status can't always cover them as they're not things I'm doing (and it annoys the hell out of me when people say something like "Joe Bloggs wahahaey school cancelled lets go party!"). I hope there's some Konfabulator widget that lets me Tweet right from my Desktop. Heck, it's mentioned on BBC News all the time, so it must be good enough for me!

Got the day off school yesterday because of 4 inches or so of snow. More is forecast for tomorrow, and the school website says "The Met Office Web-site is currently forecasting a high probability of heavy snow during the day" which, according to their website is 60%. Very high probability indeed!

I made a vain attempt to gain some more points on Mario Kart Wii this afternoon, but it seems I'm going through a phase of being rubbish at games again. Only the other day I was coming 1st, 2nd, 3rd in most races, but today it's 8th, 10th, 12th. I started with 5000 points, went up to 7000 and now I'm almost back at 5000 again! Oh, the woes.

I don't know whether it's just because I've been busy recently, or whether I don't have anything to talk about, or whether I have lots of small things to talk about that don't warrant an entire post (which I promptly forget about). Perhaps I should get on Twitter.

The winter theme for the site has been and gone - it was basically a different header image that I pasted in with some snowflakes on, but I thought it looked nice! Of course, as soon as I remove it there's loads of snowfall across the UK. Curse you southerners! I expect most of the schools in Kent and Essex have been shut today. I can only hope that my school is closed tomorrow!

One thing I haven't mentioned since I added them are the shiny profile buttons on the right. They're just about the only graphics I've ever made myself that don't look awful, and if anyone wants to nick any of them then feel free! They sum up my online persona pretty well, I think. The only problem is, you can only see my Facebook profile if you're a friend-of-a-friend!

I had a fairly boring Christmas seeing as I didn't ask for anything in particular. Unfortunately if I ask mum or dad for an Inno3D GeForce 9800GTX OC they'd probably look at me strangely and buy me a DVD of Allo! Allo! instead. (Not that there's anything wrong with Allo! Allo!) I've decided I don't really need a new computer for the forseeable future - I'd rather save up for the next year and buy a really awesome one when I finish sixth-form. I'm getting increasingly tempted by these tablet PCs though, particularly the Motion M1400 slate that Rodney carries around in Stargate Atlantis (carried then: RIP SGA)

Sixth Form has been particularly rubbish recently, although I hope it's just the post-Christmas laziness that'll wear off. I'm meant to be doing Computing coursework over the next six weeks, but the computers we use are so pitifully slow it takes almost 20 minutes just to log on and get Visual Basic.NET open in front of me. My roaming profile on the school network is now hopelessly broken as well, having gone from "Active Desktop recovery" as a wallpaper to no wallpaper at all and a pile of error messages when I log on. Of course, the administrators have more important things to work on, though. What these things are I'm not sure, as nothing else ever seems to happen.

Finally, I'm rather pleased that for Dad's birthday last week we got him a Wii; although ironically he knew about it before I did! I've taught him how to play golf and he seems very into that, but I prefer a good race online with some other players who fortunately aren't miles better than I am as usually happens with online games. So much for paying for internet multiplayer, all you XBox lovers! :p