Excuse my absence…

Sorry about the lack of posts over the last few days guys! Some desperate (somewhat feeble) attempts at further pure 4 revision. Want to know how it went? Simply bad. No complicated ‘perhaps this’ or ‘maybe that’. Simply bad.

I got my fifth and final offer to Bristol! If I get AAB or better (which I doubt) in my a-levels I will hopefully have a masters in engineering in four years time! Woooo!

I also, promise, that if I can get my stupid Delphi 2009 issues sorted I will post my second video blog tonight. I know how eager you all are to see it! :P

Too much FP4 revision to be done...

Sorry guys, can't really blog too much tonight. I have revision to be doing (or more recovering from revision at this particular moment in time). Check out my video blog that I will do tomorrow night, in the mean time I leave you with this:

FP4/Suicide/FP4/Suicide/FP4… Still weighing up the options…

Evening all! All I have to say is, I take back all of my FP1 complaining, FP4 is the new devil. It is actually impossible, their are no solutions. End of story. I hate revising for this exam, the questions are all different! I found this picture on the web that resembles my work to date…

Enough talk of maths, in fact, I am afraid to say nothing of interest happened today so that’s all folks!

My Visit to Bristol University’s Computing Department…

I absolutely loved every second of this experience, I really did think that Bristol lived up to it’s reputation. The day started off with a, rather delicious, sausage & egg sandwich while I was wasting some time waiting for the coach. Now I know it’s going to be hard to improve on that, but just listen up. The coach arrived, got to the department, a rather mundane introduction talk and then lunch. Then things got interesting… We had to talk to an assigned lecturer/admissions tutor about things that it put forth. There five others in my group and so I went with the “keep-talking-so-nobody-else-can-get-a-word-in-and-they-basically-have-to-let-you-in-approach" which actually seemed to work fine. To my surprise, he basically knew all of our UCAS personal statements off by heart and actually had questions for us specifically – a nice touch (if somewhat daunting).

After the interviews, it was their turn to impress us so we got shown a game that was written on the Xbox 360 by their third year students. It was no Call of Duty, but nevertheless I was impressed! I had an interesting talk on how the wiimote works also on an addition programming language (remember that while you may not find these things interesting, it is MY review!) Ended off the day with chocolate biscuits and that was about it. I am writing to you from the train now so once again, *touch wood*, I hope nothing goes wrong with them on the way home and I’ll catch you tomorrow!

One second sun, the next blizzard – that’s the west country…

I decided to write the first half of today’s blog on the train from London’s (amazing confusing) Paddington station. I tell you all, it has gone from being perfectly sunny to a complete blizzard! I am beginning to understand peoples complaints that Cambridge ceases to operate after a snow flake hits the ground. The dress code changes for snow here just mean wearing 3/4 lengths instead of shorts! Moving on from the snow, seeing as I have taken a few trains on this journey I thought it may be worth while compiling a list of things that went wrong with these trains:

• Meldreth to Royston: Nothing went wrong actually! Although my suspicion is because *touch wood* not a lot can go wrong in 6 minutes.
• Royston to London Kings Cross: Running a little late, but the atmosphere! OMG! What is wrong with people! It was complete silence, you would have thought it was a very serious game of sleeping lions. One person dared to turn on their iPod above the minimum volume level and was instantly shot and then fed to the wolves. (I did however take the advantage to finish off Eclipse, next stop Breaking Dawn.)
• London Kings Cross to London Paddington: Not to bad, the underground is usually okay. There was one point where I had to ‘change’ train though. “Will everyone going to Paddington please leave the train at the next station” So I did. “Whoop's my bad. I meant the other people.” Bravo…
• London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads: Well, I am an hour into my almost two journey (which is running 22 minutes late I have been informed) and so far I have discovered there is now a thing as ‘quiet carriages’!? “Please do not use laptops, iPods, Personal Stereos, Talk, Move the pages of your newspaper too quickly nor breath if you have a mild cold to ensure these carriages remain quiet.” About 15 minutes a door almost fell off because “A passenger tried to board once we had already left the station” – I have conjured up two possible scenarios of how this may have occurred, either he was running REALLY fast next to the train. Or, he somehow boarded the train and found that he had forgotten to actually go through the door and hence was standing on that little step outside the door.

Right, moan over, let’s hope nothing else goes wrong! I’m going to be in Bristol in less than an hour! Let’s hope I make a good impression (no I won’t be mentioning this blog).

Two is not equal to three - not even for very large values of two...

How did the AQA Maths C4 exam go I hear you say? Pretty well actually, shockingly very few of the questions resembled that of my examples previously. From where I was standing I did not hear the words "definitely a retake", nor did I see people preparing noose's to end their own misery. So in summary, no mass suicide = good.

I'm very much looking forward to visiting Bristol tomorrow! Although, unfortunately, I will have to spend almost seven hours travelling back and forward. I hope this department is giving away free computers or something to make that worth while! Bristols applicant visit days are not compulsory for applying, only if you want an offer - interesting...

What else to mention? Well, not much really. Sorry to disappoint. I will leave you with some pointless trivia as I run off to watch a repeat of Dragons Den;

• In Cleveland, Ohio it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
• Cockroaches can live for 9 days after their head has been cut off.
• The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'

Anybody prepared for the exam tomorrow? I thought not...

I thought I would start this blog off with a small prediction. 1. People will not like the AQA C4 exam tomorrow. 2. There will be much repetition of "That's a retake". 3. I may end up becoming so annoyed that I will answer a question similar to that in the picture to your left.

I also decided to create a mock paper that will reflect my prediction of the difficulty of the C4 paper approaching (if that makes sense?!). Needless to say, here it is:

1. What is x?
2. Given that line 1 is a tangent to the curve when x = 7, what is my birthday?
3. Why does 1 not equal 2?
4. If Bill decides to re-take this exam, how much call of duty will he miss out on revising for it, to the nearest millisecond?
5. You get the point...

Great, fantastic and amazing news! After a day of uploading YouTube decided that my video was suitable for their site and it is now working! (Despite being warned I could be breaking Sony Entertainment Ltd copyright laws...???) I guess that will be it today, I must get on with revision and I smell a roast dinner that is almost ready.

My first video blog... Enjoy!

A day of sun, not that I would know...

Not much to say today, pretty much spent the day at work. "Fun!" I hear you say? I know. The only bonus to this is that I got a lift both to and from work today, no walking for me! Not to mention that I avoided the daily burger king and instead settled for a Kit Kat, some hot chocolate, a Twix and some chocolate biscuits. (A pretty uneventful day in the scale of the world and stuff)... Other than one customer I overheard that was getting served by my colleague (who we shall name Liam in the following conversation, mainly because his name is Liam):

Customer enters and puts a "super sharp" knife on the counter.
Liam: Have you got any ID (as she looked under 25 or whatever it is now)?
Customer: No, sorry.
Liam: Sorry, I can't serve you then.
Customer: Okay, well how about you let me buy them, as I really need them now not later (I assume the person she wanted to kill was leaving the country or something) and I will come back later with ID.
Liam: How about no.

Now, you may hear me complain about customers a lot, but sorry this is just stupidity. For those of you who don't know, I work at Debenhams in Cambridge on Menswear.

I have just made the sixty second video blog (one take limit) for you as promised and am looking forward to your comments. Talk to you soon people of awesomeville (creative, I know)!

A careful driver is one who honks his horn when he goes through a red light...

It's official. My driving instructor thinks I'm trying to kill him. I have taken the liberty of drawing a diagram representing the situation that I basically got in today (and if you haven't guessed; the green is me and the red, the enemy). Other than that things seem to have gone well, other than the line "Maybe I have given you too much credit and assumed that because you ride a motorbike you should have more common sense than you actually have." Fail.

Moving on from driving, I decided to be a good boy and start my AQA Maths C4 revision (of which the exam is on Tuesday). As you can probably tell by the presence of this blog, that didn't go very well. I find myself in a common position in my life, laying on the bed, laptop on lap (no pun intended) and learning the various custom laws of New Zealand and Australia on 'Border Patrol' - lets call it "revision for my gap year".

It's amazing how much you can talk about a day where nothing really happened...

Things that arrived today:

• I haven't received any today, however the few letters that did arrive today may have well been left in a swimming pool. A message to Mr R Mail: If it's raining, don't attempt to use the post as an umbrella.
  

A day of blue screens and AQA's wonderful C3 maths paper...

News: I have decided to try what my good buddy Tom Preston has suggested; for those of you who don't have the time (or just have little interested) to read my (hopefully daily) blogs, I will also make a video blog at the end of each week and embed the video in my blog, this will be a maximum of 60 seconds long.

Optimistic as always I woke up today around 9am (and by wake up I mean that is the time I initially decided to hit the snooze button). The usual wake up routine, stick on the computer and the TV while generally slopping around for an hour. Enter the first disappointment of the day: my first windows 7 blue screen of death... I won't bore you on the details but suffice to say I won't be using NVidia Graphics Drivers anymore on my computer.

Got the 11:08 from Meldreth to Cambridge (and for the first time in the history of trains, this one was on time to the minute!) and arrived at college. Grabbed the pre-exam Subway that I have never been without and got stuck in to some casual revision (although someone had decided that this was a good day to play a Red Dwarf DVD for a lovely distraction). After going I don't believe it was that tough, confidently predicted myself a UMS of 80 (and for those not down with the exam lingo that's the lowest score possible to get an A). One question that really got me stuck was what is d2y/dx2 when y=tan(4x)... All I can say is for this, the first answer I got was 4 and the second missing number was 8. (No promises of them being correct although I would love to know what you got if you also took this exam.)

My 'things that arrived today' section; as most people who know me know, I am addicted to online shopping (particularly Play.com) and therefore daily deliveries often come my way with useless crap that seemed like a good idea that the time. I thought it might be fun to keep you updated on what comes through ye old postbox...

• Juno DVD, £2.99, Play.com - a fantastic DVD, couldn't possibly resist this for £2.99!

• Hama Star 62 Tripod, £12.99, Play.com Marketplace - I bought this with the intention of using it on my trip with the lovely girlfriend that is coming up soon so that, 1. There can actually be some photos with both of us in and 2. I don't have to give the camera that cost me about £150 to a complete stranger to achieve this.
  

A start to the blog of Aiden...

I have been meaning to start this blog for a while, I would rather like to get into the habit of it to not only improve my writing skills but also have a way to document my gap year. While at times I'm sure this will seem like a series of "Grumpy Old Men", I promise you, it will be an exciting (and hopefully mildly humorous) ride...