Summer Time

I have neglected to update for a while, but I’ve been having such FUN, even without access to a computer. I’ve been doing a lot of work for music Festivals, as well as the Edinburgh Festival. Whilst working putting up fences & flooring for T-in-the-Park, the largest music festival in Scotland, I got into the camping area after it had closed. Over 10,000 tents (and contents) had been left behind, destined for landfill. It’s enough to break your heart, so utterly wasteful. The organisers lie, they say the tents are ruined (poles broken or graffitied), but hundreds and hundreds are left erect, intact, and obviously nearly new. I got half a dozen clean tents, gave some away and kept a couple for myself, plus camping items such as inflatable airbed, cooking equipment, and the like. I did the same last year. New this year though, I snuck a friend of mine in and he got a dozen family-sized tents. We’re currently selling them on eBay, getting around £50, plus postage. Given these tents can cost a couple of hundred quid new, everybody really is a winner. Before you ask, yes we do state where the tents come from. We don’t pretend they’re new, we say where they’re from and exactly what they’re like, with a photo of it erected.

I got to the Wicker Man Festival a couple of weeks back, in as a VIP musician playing the Acoustic tent. The only trouble is I don’t play, but that didn’t stop me playing anyway. It was great to spend time with proper musicians, including some crusties from the legendary Ozric Tentacles; and my group got to camp close to the event, unlike the normal people who pitch quite a significant distance away. Our camp was near the main stage, fine as it closes before midnight. The ordinary punters have to put up with the Reggae Tent going till 5am. Ugly! During the burning of the Wicker Man on Saturday night we were on the other side of the site, dancing away to Disco pumping out from a novelty hat & sunglasses trader. Among other musical highlights were Gary Numan (surprisingly good), Alabama 3 (amazing), Bez & the Hacienda DJ tour (hilarious), The Specials (iconic), and a dance tent that had a full-size TARDIS (mindbending).

Last weekend was Linkylea, a local fund-raising festival. Two years ago a friend of mine did the music line-up, the result being the best band in Edinburgh and lots of space-age hippies. Now the rural locals do it and it was a lot of dodgy cover-bands and the sons and daughters of farmers. Still, my mates plated at midnight, and they really funked the place up, then the DJs played & friends played over the top of them.

Now I have the Edinburgh Festival to see, another festival in the north of England, perhaps get a bit of bar work, then off on holidays. Looks like I’ll be touring Barcelona and the region around it on a big motorcycle, then touring the south of England on a £1 bus deal.

Will keep you informed!!

Out & About in Scotland

Nice to have a couple of days out of town, but all of the luxuries of civilisation: carribean rum, ice, and a few sausages.

M&C_camping

Size IS Everything

I just love these pictures.

PS, the first Death Star is slightly less than double the size of the Whale Probe; the second somewhat more than double.

First-Class Ass

Got the first of the results in today, Objects & Algorithms (C++) coursework: 86%

Quite happy with that, puts me in the “1st Class” bracket, not that it counts this year towards any grade (that starts next year). Pleased not least because C programming (in pure, ++, or # variants) will be the course of most potential employment/earning benefit. Other scores I know who did all parts of the coursework, whose code worked, etc., are 60% and 63%.

That’s just the coursework (which will be 70% of overall mark). I checked my answers for the O&A exam, I utterly knobbed-up one of the four questions. Was a “trace the code” question, I went lunatic in an early step, which fed through much of the rest of the answer. Bah! It’ll cost me a good few percent. Nothing to REALLY worry about (wasn’t a conceptual failure, should still get a good grade), but I’m annoyed because I was debating answering a different question instead of that one & should’ve got near-enough full marks for it. Something to bear in mind.

Am in the process of moving. Packing boxes for storage (handily enough there’s a new facility next-door to the University) and moving to Edinburgh for the summer. Have been (very, very kindly) offered rent-free accommodation. It’ll provide a mechanism to get out of my (modest) overdrafts and hoard-in some cash for next term. That’s if I don’t drink, smoke, pop, snort & blow it first.

How to celebrate, though? Mmm. I know. Let’s have some unrelated Sexy Star Wars!!

One of the ladies. And the Spartans.

Coursework & Exams – Semester 2 Diet 1

The coursework is in. UML diagrams for a supermarket were functional, but nothing really exciting in that. UML itself is interesting, it’s handy to sketch out parts of an OO system, but I don’t really care about it. Enjoyed coding C++ a lot. Wished the coursework was harder, so I did more: put in file handling and made the project work with real-world data and the like (I did check beforehand it was okay to do this). Had a lot of fun making various Linked Lists, Hash Tables and Sorting routines; I’ll be playing with C++ over the summer. The Director coursework was a struggle. The teaching was inexistent and I left it quite late to start the project. I scraped it together quickly (you hurl Darwin’s Eyeball in 3D at various religious symbols) and in the process started to learn & enjoy Director. As a 3D engine it’s surprisingly good, very poor compared to a games engine, or even Dark Basic, but it’s very light and works on all platforms from a browser; and it’s 2D engine is quite exciting. Having decided I disliked Director (a common position amongst the classmates) I’ve changed my mind completely & quite want to do some more (a common position amongst the classmates).

The exams are on. Had the Director-module exams this morning. It’s a weird three-stream module, the soft side of games (impact on society, ratings, etc.), the technical elements of gameplay (lighting, cameras, colour theory, etc.), and some tech (Macrosoft Director). Unlike all past papers there wasn’t a coding question, only soft and technical questions (I suspect retaliation, most of the soft-subject tutorials were poorly attended – I know, I was sometimes there). Two more exams next week…

Tibet – the ultimate Chinese take-away