Late night ramblings

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've even thought about doing an update to this blog..but as usual the idea has come to me at the stupidest of times. It's just a little past midnight and I've been sat in bed browsing forums on my phone for the past hour, after deciding to cut my losses for the day and get an early nights sleep for once..fat chance..

Now in my time of boredom I turn to writing here, mostly out of guilt having abandoned this blog for a while.

Yet I don't even know what I want to bloody write about..I'll probably just do the usual thing of talking about what I've been up to over the last couple of months.

I found out that my first exam is on the 8th of June, which despite the fact it's only 7 or so weeks, seems years away. Then again, I'm going to need the time. Aside from the fact I'm unbelievably lazy when it comes to revision, I know fucking zilch about most stuff in my two electronics exams... For the past few months our classes have been focused on coursework, so it's pretty easy to forget it all (no? Well at least I find it that way, probably cause the subject bores me to death) 

But yeah, so simply I know fuck all having forgotten most things, and I gotta relearn a lot of it. I'm most likely gonna look back at this like I look back at GCSEs "ahh chickenshit mate, they're easy", which frankly is probably right if I actually put enough work into subjects I disliked.

What am I even trying to get at? ...damned if I know..I think..I'm just talking shit about exams soon, I'm a lazy fucker, help, cry me a fucking river.. Something along those lines?

So..if my time hasn't been spent doing college work (often, I'm not THAT bad!....kidding) what have I been doing?

Gaming has seen a rise in time spent lately, I've blasted my way through a good amount Fallout 2 on a whim, started playing much more CS:GO and of  course chucking away many hours raiding with my guild on WoW. 

Over the Easter holiday I had a great skiing holiday in the the alps in France..now why didn't I write about that...instead of going on about electronics and my blackhole like timesink that is my PC gaming hobby.. 

I should probably just get some sleep. Writing at this minute seems just a little bit futile..plus I need sleep to try squeeze at least a tiny little nugget (don't ask me why I chose that word there, it just..fit) of work out of me before I waste another 4 hours on WoW in the evening.

Driving!

I passed my practical driving test on Tuesday. It was my second time round, as I failed my first test a couple of weeks before it, mostly because of two stupid mistakes that I made, one being on a roundabout.
To digress, the roundabouts around Salisbury are so much more complex than any other roundabout in cities & towns the size of Salisbury or even bigger. I feel learning to drive around the Salisbury area is good because of this, as it can help understand more complex roads. It is also quite nice as a lot of the areas are quite slow driving areas, which helps keep your driving slow and steady.
When I first failed I was quite disheartened, because in general the drive was quite good, and if I had not got too anxious and stressed out, I wouldn't have made those stupid errors.
This time, I definitely learned my lesson, keeping calm right from the word go. I think it helped infinitely with the test, stopping me from rushing giving my ample time to plan things up ahead.

I went for my first independent drive tonight, out to my Judo club. I am reasonably happy driving at night and I had done the drive many times before with my dad, yet as I set off, I started to feel slightly on edge. The drive went fine other than a hill start that I stalled at because I was hurriedly attempting to skip a track on my ipod while the lights were red.
The physical exercise helped me chill out, and after I had finished, I was much more relaxed on the drive back.

Over all i'm pretty happy about this, as I should be. Finally, freedom to go where I want when I want, which will be great for some days at college where I have to wait ages to catch a bus that takes about an hour and a half to get home, whereas I can drive back in half an hour.
The downsides are people wanting lifts (which i'll be happy to do if they repay me in some way, or if taking their diversion benefits me), and i'll still have the issues of going drinking, which means i'll likely still be using buses some of the time. I suppose at least there are buses home at 12 o'clock on Fridays and Saturdays, could be worse...

Freeform poetry

The distant event, waiting to be homeward bound.
Sauntering about the towering trees of green & grey.
A curious mind, worrying of endless possibilities.
Stupid thoughts, actual reality.
The planned exit strategy, an escape. Leaving them behind without warning.
Silence, ignored by the adjacent seat; a volumous breathless dismissal.
Fading whispy amber strings slipping into the evening.
Unobservance, confusion, confounding events.
Instability? Stupidity.
Future anylisis, a dumb offspring concience.
Ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is stupid.
Always learn, think forward.
Never look back.

Conditional offers

At the moment, i've got conditional offers from 3/4 of the universities i've applied to. All the grades needed seem perfectly achievable, with 320 Ucas points being the highest needed so far.

I'm pleased so far, as i've received an offer from one of my top choices, Cardiff. The offers from Bristol and Portsmouth I will consider, however for a while i've been feeling that either Cardiff or Liverpool are my top choices.
I've yet to hear from Liverpool, but should I not be accepted there, it won't be the end of the world.

I'm going to need to really work hard in the coming months. My Electronics teacher mentioned just before Christmas that we have 17 weeks left of college, not counting holiday weeks which account for another 5 or so. Still, it is not long, and with the current work load i've got, it's not great.

I'm currently way behind on writing a maximum 4000 word story for Creative Writing (Which i'm currently procrastinating from working on), and after this is finished I need to write a commentary on it, talking about my influences, styles of writing that I used, devices and other such things.

Alongside this i've got a lot of work to do on revising and generally keeping on top of Electronics work for the exams. This isn't too hard, but frankly a lot of the time I just don't give two shits about it, so convincing myself to get on with revision can be tricky sometimes, I often focus my college work efforts 100% on Music and Creative Writing, totally ignoring Electronics.
On the positive side, this is the only subject I study that I dislike, many people I know either studied or study many subjects they really don't like, but continued them purely for grades, just like I am with Electronics.

My Music BTEC is fairly relaxed for most parts. I can easily keep up with deadlines we're set, even if i've lost the "get work done as soon as it's handed to you" work ethic I had last year.
I say mostly, because one practical assignment that is coming up very soon, in three weeks, has been sprung upon us.
Each of us in the class has to compose an original song of some sort, and perform it on our main instruments. However the issue is with things like this, we often have a bottleneck on certain players, namely drummers and bass players, as our class is mostly comprised of guitar players.
Over the Christmas holidays, our teacher told us to get a basic song written, which most of us have done. However when he set us our 3-4 week deadline to perform them, he has not taken in to account practice time whatsoever. Many of us still are still not entirely finished composing, I for example have sorted out my part, and almost finished the bass lines, however still need to write lyrics and also need to jam with a drummer so they can write the drum lines. I'm finding this hard as i've written a tricky song, with odd time signatures, so getting others to learn the bass lines and drum grooves is proving hard. I could blame myself for making it so complicated, however I had no clue we'd get such a short deadline
However even others with very plain simple songs still need do practice more, and write lyrics too. I expect even if they get it all sorted and practiced, they will only just be ready, or even be a bit underprepared and put on a sub-par performance.
The thing that really fucks me off is that this exact same thing happened last year. We had to play a selection of three cover songs, and we were steadily working on it, practicing with one another, however then he also gave us a deadline that really did not give us enough time at all.

Anyway, enough of my complaints and procrastination..i've work to be getting on with...

New years ambitions

I've been thinking what I want to come out of 2015, and so I came up with this list of resolutions ambitions.

I think the most important thing is to get into a university to study audio engineering, specifically into either of my top choices; Cardiff or Liverpool.
To me, university seems like a good way to get out into the real world more, live independently, get to know more people, study a subject i'm interested in depth...there are lots of decent things about it and I just feel it's a logical step to take in progressing..through life?
Of course, I'll need to get decent grades for uni, so good A level results are by default an ambition.

Passing my driving theory test is also an important thing for me to do next year, mostly because of living in the middle of nowhere, which means relying on buses all the time. Being able to drive will also help with getting out and meeting people more often, as every time I go out, it's often a dilema of 'Why am I spending £5 on a bus fare to go out for half an hour" to exaggerate. Plus I need to be damn certain the plans i've made are going ahead, otherwise I may as well have chucked the £5 away..
I've booked my first (and hopefully last) practical test for the 9th of February, so i've got two months or so to bug my parents to come out driving with me!

Another thing I want/need to do is get a fucking job. I've been lazy about it this year. Tried looking around some local pubs, but they didn't need any staff. After that I got a bit lazy about it, but now that i'll hopefully be driving soon, it should give me more freedom in terms of looking wider for jobs, and not being tied to using public transport to get to them.

Musically, I want to practice guitar more often, and do more composition, maybe even have another shot at forming a band?
Also, more importantly I really want to get more recording done (of bands, sing-song artists..whatever I can do really), considering i'll be going to uni to study audio engineering, any experience will be good.
One thing I know that will be happening, is one of our music BTEC modules where we have to do Foli work and general sound design for a film or TV clip. This will probably be a good challenge, and i'll probably see if I can lead a few people from our class as a team, and go around collecting recordings for the project. We could always use copyright free samples downloaded off the web, but it seems i'm often prone to wanting to do things the hard way.

Right now, my last ambition of 2014 is to find something to do tonight for new years..

Car

In my last blog post I said that I would upload more and better photos of my car.

So, as promised:

Also I should mention that I'm hoping to take the practical test around the end of January! That is if I can persuade my parents to come driving with me often enough..

Lack

I haven't been doing much of late. I can  pretty much summarize the last month by saying: gaming (lots..too much?), driving, lack of being social at weekends and being lazy with college work.

Being unemployed at the moment (At the moment, isn't necessary, and not that easy to find decent shifts, am likely to look for a job again in the new year), I find I have a lot of time over the weekends compared to other people working. This means it's not that easy to make social plans, so I haven't been going out many weekends. I can deal with it, but I find after a while I feel like I need to get back on track and regularly meet up with friends and hang out. I've also been slacking on college work, not to the point where it's hard to catch up (in most cases), but i'm not preparing ahead of time, and i'm starting to mentally feel that i'm not doing enough, which is probably true...

I've been using a fair bit of this up free time gaming, no-lifeing on World of Warcraft (usually two 4 hour nights a week at minimum, not counting the casual playing, which at a rough guess is more an hour or more per day?) which while it's kept me busy, lately i've started to become a little burnt out by it and sometimes thinking 'Why not play? I've got no particular things to be doing at the moment, and I don't feel like sorting out college work just yet'. I don't feel like quitting the game or gaming in general, however I feel like I should be changing my priorities in terms of the work/gaming balance and also spending much more of the times when i'm not gaming/doing college work socializing and meeting people.

I pretty think that I need to be more proactive. I've given myself enough time to laze out, now I need to get my life a bit more on track. 

...I could start by deep cleaning my now 2 months dirty room for fucks sake..

The positive thing that i've been doing is driving. I started lessons back at the end of September, and at the start of November, my wonderful parents brought me a car! This was both to start up an insurance premium, given how expensive it is for young drivers, and also to allow me to practice driving more. I now drive to college every day, which has benefited me a lot in terms of practicing routines and general driving skills. It's been nice to be able to drive in, as it means I can wake up later, and there aren't any repercussions if I don't get out of the house quick enough, which before would mean missing the bus to college. That said, because of this i've started to become very lax in my morning timekeeping, seemingly getting out of the door later and later as the weeks go by.

The car they brought me is a Toyota Yaris. It runs well, taking corners smoothly at speed, and generally in good condition over all for its age. Looking at the insides, you wouldn't think it was 12 years old. It's also really comfortable to sit in and all very straightforward to use. My only complaint about it is the fact that it's a two door car. Given that when i'm driving, someone is always in the passenger seat, I always have to shuffle the seats about to fit things in the back..but well, it's a minor issue, and frankly i'm lucky to have a car as it is...
I'm hoping to get the test out of the way around next January, so I can drive to and from college easily, it'll allow me much more mobility in terms of being social, and also in terms of jobs, I could then not be so restricted by assessing whether I could apply for a job based on it's distance from a bus stop.

Here is a rather shitty phone camera picture of my Yaris. I'll probably upload some decent pictures at some point in the future.