Cleaning up May 29, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Gear, Instances, Paladin, World of Warcraft , add a commentJust finished an evening of Karazhan with the guild. We had the people to do two simultaneous teams which is quite promising, we could maybe have pushed 22 or so people. As such I got the rare event of being the only paladin in my raid which although isn’t normally a particularly uncommon thing I would imagine we have quite a few active paladins so I’m very rarely alone.
The run itself was a breeze, one shotted every boss and I picked up a couple of bits and pieces as well as badges of course. I didn’t pick up any straight upgrades and am still in desperate need of a new weapon, trinket and chest but its all good otherwise. One thing I really do need is to enchant more of my gear, I really dislike enchanting generally because of the necessary requirement of having contact with the enchanter themselves. It’s just irritating finding a person who can do the enchant, giving them the materials etc. I wish Blizzard would just hurry the hell up and implement auction house sellable enchants (which they showed they could do in the Arena tournament realms).
In other WoW news, I experience my first 25 man this week, Magtheridon’s Lair. It would seem that during my time away from WoW my guild has progressed as far as downing the Tier 4 25 mans which is pretty cool really, I’m very pleased with the speed of our progress. The only downside of this is that I’m starting to feel under geared again, as I was when I joined. Before I went on my break I was actually one of the better geared healers in the guild, despite starting behind the others. Now I’m a little bit behind although I’ve healed through the first 4 bosses of Zul’Aman and by the opinion of Be.Imba I shouldn’t even be able to perform at all. I guess I must be alright at this healing malarkey after all.
Back to what I was actually going to talk about - my first experience of 25 man raiding was pretty chaotic, there was damage appearing everywhere and of course I’m just freaking out because I start to forget that there are 6 other healers helping me deal with it all. I think I am, at heart, still a 5 man healer but it is being flushed out of me, albeit rather slowly. We didn’t manage to down big ol Maggy but we were already trying to 22 man it so I’m not really disheartened. We also didn’t get that many attempts on him because people were needing to go, I think a few more gos and we would have had him as all the problems that we had got dealt with very quickly generally.
I’m really enjoying the raiding with my guild and although I don’t really make any effort to make myself a part of the social side I do enjoy being in the company of the people in the guild. A lot of them to remind me of the more ambitious people I knew in Runescape, I think there is some kind of hardcore inclined gamer stereotype which just pops up everywhere and it’s kinda interesting to see that here in quite a different environment.
Dream Onslaught May 28, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Life, Misc , add a commentI seem to be under assault from dreams at the moment. Everything from random and wacky through epic adventures to life lessons. It all seems to contribute to feeling really crap in the morning. Particularly this morning, where my dream was filled with things that I would love to happen and that when I awoke it felt a bit like having it all ripped away.
Of course, these dreams are pretty typical in that they don’t shy away from blatant references to things that I have seen or felt, for example whilst I was with some wanted fugitives adventuring from a pub in the west country we had tracked down enemy and criminal (who incidentally, had no arms) to a field when a load of police cars pulled up and I feared my companions had been caught but instead they all just rushed into the field to capture the person we had found. This is probably a reference to a video I saw the other day of some thieves running our of a shop they had just robbed and getting into a car when a load of cops appear and all rush into the building whilst the robbers calming drive away.
This post is pretty pointless, I have nothing to conclude from all these dreams happening, only perhaps that I am in a great state of emotional change as I shift between phases of my life. Of course, depending on your psychological viewpoint you could say these dreams mean nothing or they mean everything however that is part of module 4 and as my exam in 2 weeks is on module 5 I don’t want to fill my mind with such distractions.
Hi Big Brother May 22, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Essay, Rants, World , add a commentSo I’ve just been reading this and it is worrying me greatly. I’m gonna quote a bit from the article and talk about it general because the whole idea is quite simply ridiculous and I definitely need to point it out.
The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients.
Further alarms about a Big Brother society? No, this IS a Big Brother society. The moment that the government holds records of all digital activities a person makes is the moment that we become a Big Brother society. It’s quite simple.
And then of course, there is the governments excellent track record when it comes to data security. It’s actually more a case of What data security? This is the same people that lose disks filled with personal information on a regular basis and they think they can look after every detail of every communication any person makes? They must be fucking retarded.
Actually, on that note, I think they are fucking retarded. Other ingenious ideas for stopping crime and terrorism included putting microphones in lamp posts. I think I can sum up the problem with that in a single quote from satire quiz Mock the week (slightly paraphrased, it was a long time ago) “Lets go and discuss our evil plans in this brightly lit area”.
Exactly how stupid the government think terrorists and criminals are continues to astound me. Do they somehow think that just because they’re on the internet that they can openly discuss their next targets? Are they silly enough to think of email as a secure way of discussing their dastardly deeds? OF COURSE THEY DON’T. The literal bumbling idiocy of our aged and confused government officials never ceases to astound me.
I cannot see what right the government have to do this, not only would they be unlikely to keep the data secure but all it would do is breach the privacy of 60 billion people. Along side that you might catch Johnny who has been selling a bit of weed on street corners and Rob who vandalized a signpost. Yeah, that’s really worth the privacy of those people.
I don’t want this “safety”. Of course I don’t think that terrorism should be overlooked, of course people’s safety is important but lets face it, we’ve had a hand full of terrorist incidents in this country with relatively low death counts. Terrorism is only threatening if you let the fear control you. That is what terrorism is. Terrorists want to destroy our society and our freedoms and that is exactly what you are doing for them. They sacrifice a few bombers, kill 50 people and suddenly its time to watch every citizen of this country so closely that you can tell everything that’s happened to them.
No. That’s not what’s going to happen. As a people we must be stronger than this, as easy as it is to piss away your personal freedoms and let Mr Big Government protect you with their shiny database and nifty lamp post mics we can’t let it happen. Why would we want to live in a country where every innocent person lives in fear of being dragged away because of a joke in an email?
Again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try and stop terrorism. I’m just saying that there is no reason for us to lose personal freedoms over it. In fact, the best way to beat it is a united front of positivity.
Take away your fear and the terrorists lose.
They are May 20, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Internets, Rants , add a commentScientology is a cult.
I really don’t know what to think of this. It’s the kind of thing I expect to happen in other countries (read: America) where they like to go around suing each other but I really can’t believe this. How can calling something what it is possibly be a prosecutable offense? It just pisses me right off.
I really feel like this would be a good time to write an angry letter but given that I have no idea where exactly I would send such a letter I’m not going to. I’m not gonna ramble about Scientology because I doubt that anybody much on the internet still thinks they do any good in the world (other than perhaps taking money from stupid people…) but the fact that they have this kind of grip makes me angry and not just a little scared.
I’m not about to go quietly however…
May Balling it Up
Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, School , add a commentYes, last Friday it was indeed that time of the year again. I mentioned it last year although it didn’t get its own shiny post dedicated to it.
Unlike last year, this time round I had a bit more time to prepare myself. Back then I had 3 hours of exams the afternoon before the May Ball and barely had time to put clothes on before friends were turning up to be taken there. I had a much more relaxed time this year and we arrived not early but not late either.
Although our invites told us that we needed to be there for 6.45pm to have the photo taken at 7pm it was much closer to 7.45 when the photo actually got taken. We hung around eating sweets and throwing around innuendo in the entrance bit. Unlike last year the photo was taken inside and thus required a lot of squashing up to fit everyone in it, I assume that the photographer did get everyone in, he seemed to take quite a lot of photos so it will be pot luck whether I look ok in the one that is chosen as the “official” photo.
At this point we all sat down to eat. Being that my sixth form friendship group consists of me and 3 other people it was pretty much guaranteed that we would be sat with another group of people although till we got there we didn’t know who. I was quite pleased to find we were sat on table F (for failure, obviously) and were with a group of people similar to ourselves in terms of popularity. Perfectly nice people so that was all good. Last time around we basically had the table to ourselves as a couple of people on it didn’t show up and the ones that did just left the table and didn’t come back.
When it comes to the food I can’t help but feel I’m on my own with my opinion. The starter was a tomato soup with croûtons and bread rolls which I thought was very nice and the staff checked who was vegetarian (on our table it may have just been me, I’m not entirely sure as I was at the end). Main course I already knew was going to be lasagna and chips (strange combination…) and mine was basically a lasagna with all the meat replaced by vegetables, which works fine for me and I quite enjoyed it. From what people were saying in tutor period this morning however, it didn’t seem to go down well. Maybe the meat version was far inferior or perhaps they are just fussy. I don’t know. Pudding was a profita roll type thing with quite a lot of cream. Nice but for whatever reason I was just too full to get through it all.
Once everyone was close enough to finished they brought on the band whose name I couldn’t really hear properly so I won’t try and tell you who they were. They played last year and have band members ranging through a few years although most do not go to our school anymore. As expected it was pretty crappy pop-rock with rather boring lead even if it was technically correct. They also had some quite weird line up changes, with some songs the singer was just singing whilst his younger brother played bass but in others the singer played bass as well and the other guy just sat out. The drummer also did a small bit of playing guitar and singing whilst they were setting up for their second set which was really quite bad and a very good example of why drummers should never be allowed to play guitar.
I also noticed this time round that they had really quite craptacular amps, I think one of them was a Marshall MG (the first amp I got, they are awful) and the other was some other quite small and uninteresting amp. No one used any effects and the drum kit was a bit lacking in options, although I’m not sure if they would have been used if they were there. I think that completes my criticisms, to be fair on them, they weren’t really that bad. They did what they did perfectly well and although the songs they played weren’t really to my taste they were generally good choices for the audience they had, I don’t expect stuff I like to be played.
On the note of band playing though, it would be good if we could get Opium Toad on for next years May Ball, probably just for a small opening set since we would of course be bringing the metal. I have a little more faith in the will-be-then-year-12s as I know quite a few of them and there is a bigger rock/metal presence in their year. It wouldn’t really be strange for us to be there either, since 3/5s of the band will probably be going to that sixth form and the rest of us are still about.
That’s a bit of a tangent, back onto the ball. Once the band had disappeared it was just the DJ, a typical balding, middle aged overweight guy if I remember correctly. Of course from this point the music was just god awful. Filled with crappy rap and pop, some of the shit was played more than once and that particularly annoyed me because they could have used that time to play Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. It never was played, of course, because any requests for it would be fighting against a flood of requests for rubbish.
At this point the night mostly turned into watching drunk people, such as our friend David, get drunker and drunker and do amazing things. Sights included seeing my tutor (and IT teacher to friends) attempting to do the Macarena (something I tried last year but there wasn’t enough wine for that this time around) and my friend getting a hug and drunken future encouragements from another IT teacher. It was gold.
The night culminated with a bit of Don’t stop me now by Queen followed by Livin’ on a prayer, which enticed our drunken David to the dance floor, where his swaggerings kept us all raving away. Once we were shortly into Livin’ on a prayer David bolted off the dance floor without a word. Of course, without his swaggering we had no hope of staying on the dance floor, dancing is really not our thing, particularly with my blood alcohol level, it just wasn’t going to happen.
Naturally there was confusion as to where he had gone and after a couple of minutes my friend returned from the toilet with some amazing news: Vomit. Or more specifically: Vomit Explosion.
As it happens, he had headed to the toilet once he realized something was up but the bodily processes were already in motion and things were already well underway before he was in the door to the mini-corridor that lead to the actual men’s bathroom. To sum up the damage, there was vomit on the carpet before the mini corridor, vomit on the floor and a bit of the wall of the mini corridor and of course all over the floor of the bathroom as well. Presumably he got some in the toilet as well but I didn’t really want to get that close, the smell was a pretty potent spectacle to behold and as he exited the building (which he did in a great hurry) he left a great trail of smell behind him. It was amazing.
The few great sights alone made the night worth it really. I left out a few bits which I can’t remember in enough detail or can’t really write about in a reasonably anonymous way (eg the awards). Of course David gets left out of the vague anonymity because of his amazing performance.
Still to come, the report from Saturday, which will hopefully be a bit shorter because this has grown to rather an epic length…
Setting the tone May 15, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Rants, School , add a commentSo I just got back from my first exam of the season, Maths Pure Core 2. I suppose I can sum it up by saying I’ll be lucky if I even get a grade. Yes, it was that bad. Turns out when I said I was going to fail this exam I wasn’t actually that far off.
This exam was so bad it was almost spooky, it literally included everything in the syllabus that I don’t know, twice if it could manage it. I’m not sure I’ve ever had an exam so tailor made to my failure. At the moment I’m just so pleased that none of my university offers include maths, it doesn’t matter how well I do.
At this point I’m contemplating whether I should even try for the next exam. I already know I’m not gonna get a good grade in maths and since it doesn’t matter…is it even worth trying? I’ll probably do ok in the exam with little effort because it’s Mechanics and as such is quite physics based, I tend to find maths quite hard in some areas because the use of the maths seems to be lost somewhere along the line and things I can’t put to a use I forget.
If anything this is a testament to just how hard you have to work to do well in Maths AS and A level. I did about a bit less than half the work I should have done and missed a good few lessons and I’m pretty bright but have almost failed. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for someone who wasn’t so bright, you would just have to work so ridiculously hard. Let this be a warning to anyone planning to do it, you’ve got to work. If you’re reasonably intelligent you can get a C in GCSE maths without really trying (or you could two years ago, some things have changed a bit but I doubt this has). When I did it a C was 15%. Come on. At AS level, a C is 60% and the maths is substantially harder. It’s a massive leap, perhaps the biggest of all the subjects I’m familiar with.
So yes Mr Maths exam, you have successfully set the tone for the entire exam period, the tone of sweet sweet agonizing failure.
