Day 30: Outro

Good evening guys!

So here it is! The final post of my 30 Day Challenge, and I have really brought it down to the wire, with this article being published probably 10 minutes before midnight of the 30th, but at least I made it! And so as a point of reference, I thought I’d talk a little about my experiences regarding one of my blogging career’s most pivotal points.

If any of you have seen Morgan Spurlock’s revolutionary documentary Supersize Me, in which he eats three McDonald’s meals a day for 30 Days (and simultaneously popularised the idea of the 30 Day Challenge), you may recall, I think, that whilst he struggled through the entire month, there were two particularly low points: Day 3 and Day 11. He mentioned that when he quit smoking, the third day was always the worst. It’s sufficient time to be hit by the consequences of the challenge, but not long enough for a tactic or pattern to have emerged regarding it. He did say that after Day 3 it was plain sailing, but in the McDonald’s challenge that was proving wrong, showing that at Day 11 he felt most ill and most bloated.

Oddly enough, this challenge was fairly similar for me. If you were to read the very first posts, you will be aware that by Day 3 I was already running out of ideas, and by Day 11 (or maybe slightly later), I literally had nothing to write about, leading to some of the most mundane things I have ever written on a laptop. And when I had to make up for lost ground in the last week, I was full of ideas, making publishing of these posts a simple task, relatively speaking. Therefore, one thing that this challenge did teach me was a lesson on perseverance. Maybe it was just the threat I set myself at the beginning regarding failure on the World Wide Web, but it did show that if you do write enough rubbish, you can achieve something like this.

In his TED talk about 30 Day Challenges, Matt Cutts says that one thing he achieved from all of his various activities was time being much more memorable. as it worked for this challenge? I guess it’s hard to tell so early on. Whilst 2014 seems years away, this month has gone pretty quickly, due to all the stuff that was going on outside of this blog. However, events that took place throughout January 2015, which I normally would have forgotten, will be easily recallable upon simply reading a post.

One of the lessons Matt Cutts also learnt was that small, sustainable changes are much more likely to stick than huge challenges. I like to think of this challenge as one of the larger ones, because slicing a good chunk out of my evening to write is quite a commitment, and will never, ever stick. I do like to think, though, that this blog has encouraged me to do more writing, and to not enter into one of my numerous blogging hiatuses. So as I mentioned in one of my more mundane posts, blogging every Sunday at least will commence on Sunday 1st February 2015. Are you guys pysched?????? I bet you are!!!!!!!

I guess, then, we will have to wait a while to see whether this challenge has actually taken its toll anywhere other than proving to myself that I have worrying amounts of free time when I have coursework to do. Regardless, whilst at point it has seemed unnecessary and exhausting, I don’t regret undertaking this challenge and am proud of both the entertaining posts I’ve written and showing that the Internet is not that scary a place after all.

But to celebrate, I thought I’d finish with some of my favourite album outro songs (yes, I had to finish on a musical not).

See you soon guys!

Lisa Hannigan – Lille (from Sea Sew)

Elbow – Friend Of Ours (from Seldom Seen Kid)

The Smiths – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others (from The Queen Is Dead)

The Stanley Brothers – Angel Band (from the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

Arcade Fire – In The Backseat (from Funeral)

Vampire Weekend – Young Lion (from Modern Vampires Of The City)

Day 29: Re-introducing Benjamin

Hello everyone!

Given that I had to write two posts this evening, originally I was planning on Day 29 being super disappointing and irrelevant. However, after my reply to this post received more likes than the original, Benjamin Williams has returned for a second appearance in a week! To talk about something maybe a bit more…easy to understand this time. At least for a few of you…

Thanks again to Benjamin, and enjoy!

I’ve been brought back to help Daniel suffer through his poor life choices.

Fun fact: I’m ginger

Less fun fact: I am called a carrot person

More fun fact: Dolphins are still endangered. Hehehe.

So, I am called a carrot. This is not only confusingly offensive, ““Oi, root vegetable dickhead!” (?)”, but also factually incorrect. If I were to be a carrot in this sense, I would have green hair and be from Essex, hence carrots are obviously victimised in society as no-one truly sees them as who they are, orange with green hair.

I could have written this about real stereotypes and prejudices, but they don’t interest me. Gingers are systematically insulted throughout their lives, unless they are beautiful and/or Ron Weasley, but the question is why?

*Insert pictures of Nicole Kidman (or any famous awesome ginger) and Rupert Grint looking awful*

(A message from Daniel: Amy Adams is cooler than Nicole Kidman AND more ginger. Take that Benjamin!)

Well let’s look at history. Traditionally, Satan has been seen as a ginger goat, yet the goat community have not suffered at all from this. I assume this causes the God-fearing to hate the auburn race, but what else? Gingers have always been associated with having tempers, because obviously our heads are burning, cos they are orange? Geddit? #banter.  Oddly enough, this actually happens nowadays because gingers are victimized to the point of exhaustion.

Maybe it’s similar to the victimisation of black people? I mean, the first modern slaves were Irish, and some must have been ginger. It’s the initial fear of a difference in physical appearance that causes people to insult and keep gingers at a distance, because change is scary, and the world is full of wimps.

The range of insults always confuses me as well. I understand many, such as Duracell™ or Wotsit, but some of the origins of these insults are mysterious. For example, why are gingers called ginger nuts? Why are they called ginger in the first place? We would have to delve into linguistics to find out, and it would probably relate to some sort of Celtic, because they have the largest concentration of gingers,  but how did that come to mean the same thing as a spicy herb? (It’s a herb, I checked Wiki)

South Park is also responsible for this abuse. I mean, many people were pretty neutral about gingers, had a friend who was ginger, didn’t really care about freckles or whatever. But now, we are like vampires, because we burn in sunlight, freckles are marks of the devil and we have no soles. #nogingerfishmongers

I’m kind of waiting for the most recent cultural revolution to fully finish. Currently, “redheads” are being seen more and more as a desirable thing in women, with ginger-philiac traffic on pornography websites shooting up in recent years.

So, all of you gingers out there, gear up for a huge amount of sexual intercourse in future, and do more thigh exercises, because the revolution is going to be upon us, and you better be ready.

Thanks, Benjamin

PS: Ed Sheeran is a bit shit though

Day 25: An Alternative Perspective On Dolphins

Hello everyone!

Amidst the rush to make up on the posts I missed during my mocks before the deadline on the 30th, I’ve been (un)lucky enough to earn myself a guest writer…Benjamin. Some of you may remember this ginger-haired fellow as the guy with whom I have a deal regarding video games (he even said he’d buy it for me on Steam…but I don’t have Steam *evil grin*). Being the sort of guy who wants to make his opinions known to everyone, no matter how mad, he has written a post on something very close to his heart: dolphins. More specifically, dolphin hating.

I am aware of how irrational this sounds, but I’ll post his opinions below, and then I’ll be making some sort of reply in the next post. But for the meantime…here’s Benjamin!

I hate dolphins.

As quoted from A Chronicle of a Death Foretold by the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in the original Spanish, “Pensaba que su serenidad no era inocencia sino cinismo,” or in English, “I thought his calmness was not due to innocence, but instead cynicism.” This is relevant because in my eyes, dolphins that you see playing in the sea or being used in therapy are actually just biding their time until they can overthrow their human overlords and kill us.

Now, as this is a blog, and you were expecting something based on music or Ebola instead of me, you would expect a lacklustre rant. But I assure you, you are mistaken!

I have compiled a large database of dolphin knowledge over the last few years; it doesn’t hurt to know your enemy.

So for starters, dolphins kill lots of things… It has been observed in nature that dolphins will attack porpoises without reason, which is pretty evil when you consider that they are related somehow biologically and porpoises are smaller and weaker. They also bully other types of dolphin, e.g. if a bottlenose wandered into a group of flat nosed dolphins, he would be bitten and attacked relentlessly, sometimes even killed! Dolphins have also been seen to “play” with birds by attempting to drag them underwater and playing catch with small sea creatures. Modern dolphins would call that “banter.”

Dolphins even kill children, human children! If little Timmy floated off on an inflatable while you were embroiled in an argument with your spouse who looks a lot fatter than she did 4 years ago, when they find his body, it could be covered with dolphin bite-marks.

Also, there have been many cases of dolphins going “mental” and attacking people. Tikkum the orca killed 3 trainers in Seaworld, the people who fed and cared for him. Tiao the dolphin killed someone and injured 29 others in open water, when they were trying to be friendly. George the dolphin hospitalized 2 adults, bit children and tried to push a child out to sea.

Not. Nice.

I have a Big Issue™ with Dolphin-Friendly™ fish as well. I think it wastes a lot of money and makes the whole process more inefficient. First of all, it doesn’t even work effectively. Only the fishing of Albacore fish is completely dolphin-friendly, so someone may have killed Flipper for your tin of John West tuna. Plus why should we have to protect dolphins? They are apex predators in their environment; one or two getting caught in a net won’t make a difference as they thrive by being top of their food chain. Also, if people eat shark, why do they not eat dolphin? That would be a cool thing to try!

But I will attempt to add some credibility by balancing my argument a little. It may be the humans’ fault, but it may be the dolphins’ fault also. Mitzi the dolphin, who played Flipper in the TV show, killed itself. Now, this could be due to the overwhelming glamour of the modern Hollywood lifestyle, or that even the creature itself didn’t believe that it deserved life and committed suicide honourably. Swimming with dolphins is illegal without a permit, so, does that mean that people can’t be trusted with the dolphins unsupervised, or can dolphins not be trusted with us????

When dolphins are caught for study or for Seaworld, they are caught inhumanely and killed if they escape, so maybe it’s our fault they don’t like Seaworld. Then again, everyone likes Seaworld, so I find that hard to believe. Flipper’s trainer hated looking after his dolphin so much that now he is trying to stop dolphin captivity. Either that or he hated the conditions they were living in, I don’t remember. Plus, there has been no credible evidence of dolphin therapy working. You could say it is a Plaice-ibo. Ha…. Oh dear….

But to conclude, I think dolphins are evil, but then again, who I am to think that? As a human, a member of a species that has killed millions of other creatures, all of whom did not deserve it as much as dolphins, maybe we are the most evil…

PS: Dolphins are still c***s

Day 24: The Game

Hello again!

Two posts in quick succession! Oh yeah…

So today, sixteen people in my friendship group at school, including myself, embarked on an epic game which I have rather stubbornly referred to as The Game. The term ‘epic’ has a reputation for being overused, but I don’t use this word in vain, because quite frankly, The Game is not just a game: it’s a saga. A legend. And could potentially go on for months.

I should probably explain what this game actually is…

It’s kind of loosely based on the popular game Cluedo, but more of a prequel to it. Essentially, in our case, there are sixteen people. Three pots are made: one with all sixteen names. One with sixteen locations throughout school. One with sixteen objects. Each person then picks one from each pot. From then on, the aim is to ‘kill’ the person you’ve chosen. This is done by touching them with your selected object, in the specified location. Once you ‘kill’ your target, you take their selected name, object and location, and thus you have a new target. The last man standing is the winner.

But of course, this is a game being played by my friends, so we had to make it at least a bit more interesting. The main complication in this game is that you can’t ‘kill’ your target when there are other competitors in the specified location. This adds a new dimension to the game, involving all sorts of tactics, plans, sneak and preparation. This is all part of what makes The Game a true epic. There will be heroes and villains. Kings and pawns. Apparently alliances have already been formed, and we’re wondering when the sweepstakes for who will be the winner will actually start. Because when you are the sort of person who plays these kinds of games, you don’t play it: you absorb yourself in it. Have you ever played Snap with Ed and Marcus? Thought not. That’s why you still have all of your fingers.

And after one day of intense play, after sixteen brave souls entered the arena (Old Hall Lane, Rusholme), there have been five fatalities, including myself, stabbed in the back (literally and figuratively) by Luke in the Drinks Corridor whilst on an innocent voyage to obtain my bag after lunch. Luke is seeming to emerge as the strong link of the game, removing poor John before school even started, resulting in the first fatality of this most epic of games. However, who could possibly predict what will happen?

The big surprise of the day was the removal of good ol’ Ross McDonald, who was taken out by the brave knight Sir Louis minutes before Luke struck for the second time. As the instigator of the entire game, and an expert in strategy, Ross was running as odds-on favourite (in my opinion) to take first place. But of course, every king must fall, but who will take his position? Will it be Louis, slayer of the mighty ruler? Or will Luke retain his position as the deadly assassin? Or will Danny stay ill for the entire game, thus preventing his removal? I hope to keep you guys updated…

Day 21: Being Really Tired

Evening everyone!

It’s late again…I reckon the rest of this 30 Day Challenge is just going to be a load of boring, midnight muses because the person whose bright idea it was to embark on this challenge is not leading interesting enough a life for new posts to come in daily.

I even made a promise to myself that this weekend I was going to write at least three blog posts, because this is my 21st post and I, ideally, I need thirty come Friday. I even had an idea for a post about tragic characters, comparing Oedipus from Sophocles’ play Oedipus Tyrannus and Roberto Benigni’s character in Life Is Beautiful. But I guess that’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Fortunately, I did do the majority of the things I set out to do today. I finished my Chemistry write-up. Revised nerve structure. Did a nice chunk of guitar practice, where I’m preparing Isaac Albeniz’s masterpiece Asturias (which hopefully I will post here when its finished). It’s been an alright day.

I even found time to watch another film: the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. Whilst it did have that distinctly Anderson-esque feel to it, with the interesting face-on camera angles, unique storyline, direct script and wacky sets, I can’t say it was better than Moonrise Kingdom or The Grand Budapest Hotel, films which truly define Anderson’s style, with a load more creativity associated with both of them, not just regarding sets, but character development as well. It was, however, much better than Rushmore. It’s a shame that Rushmore was such a step away from Anderson’s brilliance, that it felt like it was just another, regular film. despite the inquisitive and fascinating main character, and a cast led by Jason Schwartzmann and Bill Murray.

Yesterday, I also watched another Coen brothers film, A Serious Man. It was fine, but absolutely nothing compared to the other Coen brothers films I’ve seen.

There, this blog is now about me randomly writing note-like sentences about the films I watch. Fortunately, the school week starts again tomorrow, so I will undoubtedly have many a story to describe to you all.

G’night

Day 17: My Version of Legal Highs

Evening all!

It was entrance exam today, so I was treated to a blissful Wednesday off. I won’t day that I’m disappointed by this. I got some Biology revision done. I practised my guitar. I did some last minute research on modelling a zombie apocalypse in preparation for my Maths Society Talk tomorrow. I watched Shaun of the Dead with the realisation that I knew nothing about zombies. It was a pretty good day. However at this moment, for no apparent reason at all, I am completely exhausted.

It could just be that I was out of the house for only 20 minutes today, and being stuck inside makes me feel super groggy and depressed, even if it is below freezing outside. It might be that I have done worryingly little exercise recently, bar walking around school and through town. It could be that there was no fruit in the house, or that we ran out of coffee (even though I only drink decaff). I’m not so sure.

The interesting thing is that I never feel this way after a school day. This is because being out of the house from 7am to 6pm bombards me with all sorts of stimuli for keeping me awake, even if it something as simple as the music in my earphones or the sound of some annoying secondary school kids. These are what keep me awake and alert, and prevent me from spontaneously keeling over in my seat.

A lot of people choose to stay awake by means I wouldn’t exactly consider…ideal. A lot of people use those tiny energy drinks that taste horrible and are crammed with all sorts of horrible substances, like taurine (synthesised bull sperm. Seriously, whose idea was that?). How can somebody bring themselves to drink something like that? These are also the kind of people who complain about exhaustion on a Monday, after two days of doing absolutely nothing.

This is just one of many silly ways in which people try and keep themselves alert. So, if you are one of those taurine-guzzling individuals who finds themselves unable to force their eyelids open, maybe this is your lucky day? Because I have my top three sure-fire ways of keeping you awake in the morning. In addition to actually working, all three of these methods are cheap, easy to make the most of and don’t involve you putting your health/sanity/tastebuds at any risk.

3. A Freezing Cold North Manchester Winter Morning

The only issue with this method is that it only really works between late December and late January. Regardless, if you ever find yourself in this situation, it is utterly impossible to fall asleep, mainly because if you do then you’ll end up a soggy, miserable mess. However, the huge benefit of these mornings is that these are the mornings which people live for. Rather than being pure lack of heat, these mornings have a certain refreshing nature to them. If it happens to be cold enough at around late November, as it has been recently, you will know that there is nothing like stepping out and seeing the leaves falling from the trees into a crunchy, icy pile below. I will be leaving Manchester this September, hopefully going to study in London. There will, though, be a few things that I will miss. These mornings are certainly going to be one of them.

2. Mars Bars

My mate Laurie will agree with me on this one. I cannot remember the last time he had’t just eaten a Mars bar, and I’ve known him for six years. Though he complains about exhaustion a lot, being an IB sucker student, he seems to spend at least most of the school day awake. Coincidence? I doubt it.

I’ve tried this method too. Once I had to do a an assembly in front to 400 people with an incredible bout of jetlag. My solution: two Mars bars. And it worked. Now, I will eat one 20 minutes before each guitar lesson, to miraculously improve my dexterity. I eat one before every presentation I do (two if I’m particularly nervous). To be honest, when you cram so much sugar into such a small chunk of chocolate (which is getting smaller. Something needs to be done about that. Laurie agrees), how can you not be completely alert afterwards?

1. Fuck Buttons – Brainfreeze

This seems like an odd heading for my top ‘legal high’, but it is most true in my opinion. Before my Chemistry mock last year, I listened to Brainfreeze by British electronic duo Fuck Buttons (a rather unorthodox name I know). Eight minutes later, my hands were shaken and I was as hyper as a four-year-old after an irresponsibly large fix of jelly beans. That probably explains why the exam didn’t go too well…

Even if it didn’t exactly fulfil what I set out for it to achieve (to get a good grade with the limited revision that I had done), I was really awake, and so it tops this list, which I clearly spent ages compiling and perfecting. Fuck Buttons have a wonderful technique about them, involving continually building sounds upon sounds, resulting in an incredible organised chaos, which permeates all three of their albums. However, in terms of staying awake, this song, the opening track from their 2013 album Slow Focus is the solution. All you need to do is listen to it:

And that concludes my post for today. I realise that the title wasn’t really representative of what I wanted to write about, but I haven’t done any of my three suggestions since about midday today, so I hope you can forgive me.

I hope to get a post out tomorrow, but I’m doubtful given it being Parents’ Evening. I’ll try my best though! Because I am still four days behind, and the 30th is looming…

See you soon!

Day 16: A Confusing Profanity

Hello again!

This next post is another addition to what seems to now be a long line of posts about completely random things. This might be the sign that. with Parents’ Evening on Thursday and lack of work to get on with, I’m starting to run out of really random stuff, so should just do my infamous albums post. However, for some reason, all of these posts seem to do much better than my reviews…so here we go!

I am currently studying A-Levels in Biology and Chemistry, so I am no stranger to conducting practical investigations in class. In addition to this, especially regarding Chemistry, I am used to dealing with substances contained in scary looking bottles, displaying signs such as “Toxic” or “Corrosive”, or other words which can strike fear into anybody who is easily scared by a bottle of chemicals.

Today, I was conducting a titration using a couple of rather nasty chemicals, including an acid solution which I had prepared a few days before, so quite frankly it could have been seething with awful compounds from god-knows-where. And of course, when dealing with these substances, protection is fundamental. At school, this doesn’t normally extend beyond lab coat and safety goggles.

The lab coat, of course, is essential for keeping these substances away from one’s clothes, because who knows how you get bright pink phenolphthalein indicator out of a blazer? However, in addition to keeping the blazer and front clean of corrosion, lab coats are also extremely helpful in keeping the arms safe. Given the fact that all sorts of beakers and burettes and pipettes, containing these substances, are manoeuvred by the hands, surely it would be logical to suggest that if any part of the body is going to be touched by a spillage, it would be the hands and lower arms? It would seem surprising that hands are left uncovered, at least at my school. But in the end, all you need is a load of running water over your hand to sort that out. The lower arms, however, are a bit more of an issue, rather surprisingly. It would be reasonable, initially, to suggest that the lower arms would be covered by the sleeves of the lab coat, right? However, this assumption has not been received so well from some others, and this has led to what, in my opinion, is one of the most confusing, obscure, unnecessary profanities of recent times.

Short sleeved lab coats.

I have a feeling that, to some of you, this may be a bit of an anticlimax, given the 400-word build-up which, for some reason, you have probably read. Not for me though. When faced with the realisation that, having retrieved my goggles, the only lab coats left were the kind that left your shirt sleeves naked, cold and exposed like some sort of wild animal, I almost burst out into tears. I ended up conducting the experiment (which involved six titrations instead of the minimum of three) trembling in fear that I might over pour 1.00M sodium hydroxide into the funnel, leading to a deadly overflow of alkaline solution onto my shaking arms. Probably why I had to repeat the experiment five more times…

The thing that strikes me most about short sleeved lab coats is that, other than the sleeve issue, they aren’t different at all to logical, reasonably, long sleeved lab coats. They’re made of the same material. They all reach the same point on my knee. Yet the long sleeved model is so much more functional than the other. It’s as if they looked at the long sleeved model and said “Why don’t we supply this school with half long sleeved and half short sleeved lab coats? Then we can watch as the A-Level students squabble over the long sleeved ones, and the weakest of the class will be at the evolutionary disadvantage of short sleeved lab coats! Suckers!”

Imagine if an aeroplane company decided to just cut half of each wing off? It’s the same scenario! In both cases, something fundamental to the object’s usage is being removed for, seemingly, no apparent reason. And the removed chunk is most likely just thrown away, without finishing what it was started to achieve. Would you go on an aeroplane like that? Of course not. So why should we be expected to wear lab coats like this? This is what is wrong with our society today. This is what keeps me awake at night.

Anyway, that’s my stint of complete and utter madness done for today. Tune in tomorrow, where I’ll probably come up with something even more irrelevant.

Goodnight!

Day 15: Respect for Schoolbag-Kind

Evening all!

Respect is a curious virtue for a society, as it is something that has always played a fundamental role in society, especially religion. In fact, respect is so important in religion that the Fifth Commandment orders one  to ‘honour thy mother and father’. However, all you need to do is have a quick look at some of today’s youth to see that this commandment has been rather ruthlessly ignored, not just regarding parents, but regarding the general public. Thieving. Fraud. Abuse. These are all examples of people having no respect for others. And it’s damaging.

Not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I like to consider myself a pretty respectful person. I always appreciate the actions of everyone around me, especially my parents. I frown upon people being punched. I don’t swear at people, only with people. I like to hope that if I treat people with respect and courtesy, then I will receive the same in return.

However, there are two things that I don’t seem to treat with much respect, and they are 1) silly comments about Israel and the Middle East and 2) schoolbags. It is the less rational of these two that I want to focus on in this post.

I have no idea why I seem to treat my bags with such hatred and contempt, but every bag I have seems to end up torn, or with a broken zip, or smothered in enough duct tape to hold together a bridge. The strap on my most recent fatality came so close to being ripped apart, that I was running around school looking for safety pins. First the art department (where only the week before I had ventured in asking for super glue to stick my thumb nail back on right before a guitar recital). Then the physics department (where I actually found the super glue for my thumb nail). In the end, I ended up at the door of the nurse’s office asking for sufficient safety pins to mend my poorly bag. It was a surreal moment for everybody there. Especially for the bag.

So last Friday, I ended up in another situation involving me wondering around Sports Direct in Manchester searching for a bag for less than £15, which was a secure as Alcatraz Prison. As I wondered aimlessly around the store, I liked to imagine all the bags on their hooks begging “No! Not Daniel! Anybody but Daniel! That’s practically a death sentence! He bought my mate Brian just a few months ago, and look what’s happened to him!”

It isn’t that I genuinely hate schoolbags. In fact, I love them. They’re brilliant! They save me from the awkward situation of having to carry round all my books and papers under my arm, and for that I will always be grateful. It’s exactly like the heartbreaking story of Lennie and his rabbits in Of Mice and Men. Lennie just wanted to “tend d’em rabbits”, but he will continually underestimate his immense strength and end up squeezing the rabbits to an untimely end.

I guess the one key difference is that it’s hard for me to underestimate my immense strength when I have won so few arm wrestles…

Anyway, I did end up buying a new schoolbag, as the girl at the checkout eyed it affectionately, as it to say “May the odds be ever in your favour”, or something equally demoralising. It’s pretty standard, except the straps are basically bolted on, so I hope there’s a limited chance of it breaking (though when I own the bag, there’s no telling the extent of the damage). It’s currently in the corner of my room about to cry itself to sleep after the first day of its sentence, in which I had Chemistry and Mechanics. So it got off pretty lightly today…

Anyway, I just wanted to inform you guys of my new bag’s first day at school. I haven’t named, and probably won’t ever, because naming bags is a bit of a ridiculous idea (says the guy who named his classical guitar…). Regardless, if any of you think of a good name for the new addition to my graveyard of schoolbags bag collection, please comment below, and maybe we will all have a cheap laugh.

Is there a better kind of laugh?

Day 3: New Year’s Resolutions

It’s Day 3 and I’m already running out of things to say…and I didn’t even really say anything in Day 1…

Hello again! Fancy seeing you guys here!

So today, given that it’s 10pm and I should be studying roots of unity or oscillating motion for my mocks next week, I thought I’d write today’s post on something that, like last year, I said I’d take seriously but never got round to. However, as I am now putting this on the World Wide Web, if I don’t uphold parts of it, then that could be a bit embarrassing.

So, I have four resolutions for 2015:

1. Learn how to write Python

Something that you guys may have gathered about me is that I’m a bit of a geek. Not only a science geek (though my A-levels are Maths. Further Maths, Chemistry and Biology, and I’m taking additional Mechanics module for some ridiculous reason) but a widely-read, University-Challenge-watching geek, which I like to think is the best type of geek.

I’ve applied for Biology and Natural Sciences at university, however I am an enthusiastic mathematician, and I have noticed that that makes me somewhat of an oddball in the biological community. It seems to be widely considered that biology is the science for non-mathematicians. This, however, is something I could not disagree with more. James Lovelock proved his Gaia Theory by creating the famous Daisyworld model (which I might write about when I’m feeling a bit more enthusiastic about life in general, and recently I have been using the SIR technique and differential equations to model the imminent spread of ebola.

This is where Python comes in. Python is (I am told) a pretty simple programming language widely used by all sorts of scientist. I am not particularly bright when it comes to technology, so I’m hoping that learning Python will not only quell my sheer dim-wittedness regarding the subject, but will also apply to my biological background.

2. Learn how to do the Times Crossword

I’m sure many of you have watched the recent film The Imitation Game about the life and work of Alan Turing, brilliantly portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch. Throughout this film, there was a focus on the Times Crossword, in that Turing seemed to consider this to be the ultimate measure of one’s intellectual ability. I’ve watched my grandma do these crosswords, and just doing that left me in a dribbling intellectual mess.

This is because the Times Crossword is not just a typical crossword with typical clues. It is designed to test your absolute problem-solving ability and knowledge of the entire English language. And some of the answers are so neat. Take this one:

Important city in Czechoslovakia. Four letters.

I had no idea, but I was sure that it wasn’t going to be as simple as a 4-letter Czech city. Turns out the answer is Oslo (the capital of Norway, which really annoyed me until I found out why) because the word ‘Oslo’ appears in the word ‘Czechoslovakia’. That blew my mind…

3. Blog every Sunday

This will come into action after I have finished/given up on this 30 Day Challenge. I’ve always liked being able to describe myself as a ‘blogger’, and this gives me the opportunity to write about anything I want, from science to music to something as inane and irrelevant to anyone else as my New Year’s Resolutions. So, I’m hoping you guys are looking forward to that…

4. To not be single

Yeah, this just had to appear didn’t it…

This came courtesy of many of my other friends who have this as their only New Year’s Resolution. Which says something about my friendship group…

I’m not going to dwell on this ‘resolution’ to much, but the last two paragraphs did add 34 words to this post’s word count, so that’s quite good.

So that’s me done! If anybody wants to share their own resolutions or recommend any for me, I’d be interested to hear what you guys have to say!

See you tomorrow 😉

Day 2: My 2015

Hi guys!

As many of you will have undoubtedly realised, yesterday was New Year’s Day! Not only is this an opportunity for us to celebrate the completion of yet another cycle around our Sun by drinking and singing songs, but it is also a time for contemplation. To think about the past year. The highs and the lows. Achievements. Improvements.

Fortunately, I spent the majority of the last year contemplating every decision I made. As a result I am now so bored of 2014 that, even though I have to think of 30 topics in 30 days, I really can’t be bothered writing about it. So instead, I thought I’d do something a little newer and look to the future.

I say this is ‘newer’ stuff, but that isn’t really true, given that almost everything I did last year was in the name of ‘future’. Academically-speaking, 2014 was probably the biggest year of my life, having completed my first set of A-levels, applied for university and completed my Oxford interviews. If I was to do one little bit of reflecting to finish this paragraph, it would be that almost everything last year was important academically. Except for Green Man Festival in Summer, which was probably the most glorious way to forget about academia.

However, 2015 is absolutely not going to get any easier. It will most likely be the most important my life academically speaking again (I’ll go into details later), but it will also be the most important year on a personal level. In conclusion, to quote Greg Wallace from Masterchef, “experiencing a year doesn’t get tougher than this”.

So what will actually be happening in 2015? Well, to act as some sort of reference for myself in particular (and for you if, for some reason, you’re interested in my future plans), I’m going to try and make this as succinct as possible.

Here is my 2015, as planned out so far:

January/February

• 2015 is joyfully commenced by three days of mock A-level exams. This would normally be the most of my worries, except…
• I will be receiving a letter from Oxford University with either an offer or rejection. I’m always being told not to worry, because there is nothing I can do about my result now, and so what will be will be. I’m not so easily persuaded.
• I’ll be presenting my second talk at the Sixth Form Maths Society, where I’m going to talk about modelling Ebola (hopefully the topic for another post sometime in the future. Hope you’re looking forward to it…). I plan to call it Ebola is for Softies, though I’m unsure as to how well that will go down…
• I am starting driving lessons! This is rather late, given that many of my friends are already driving and I’ve already passed my Theory Test, but better late than never eh?

March/April

• During March I will be playing in front of the two biggest audiences I’ve ever played in front of in celebration of my school’s 500th anniversary celebrations. Both will be as part of my guitar quartet, where we’re playing Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. My younger sister is somewhat more accomplished as a musician than I am, and many of her friends are extremely talented, so playing at the school where they all study will be my mini victory!!!
• My birthday!!!! Yes, this March I will be turning 18. The big one-eight. From this day forward I will be able to do all sorts of new and exciting things, such as buying alcohol (hate all alcohol except beer…), watching films with lots of swearing, violence, nudity, drug abuse etc (this prospect I find more worrying than exciting) and being able to vote in a general election (hate politics). Still, I suppose some sort of celebration will be happening, which will be well received by everybody, given that…
• I will probably/hopefully/ideally be starting revision for my finals around this time.
• To finish off this period, at the end of April I will be experiencing my last ever day of school. Our school does the typical leavers’ thing of giving everyone hoodies with the names of everyone in the year on the back, and for years I’ve been considering how fun it’d be to wear a ‘leaver’s hoody’. It’s hard to say right now. I’ve been at my school ever since September 2008, and have made so made so many incredible friends and met loads of wonderful people in this time. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe I’ll write another blog post about it when the time comes…

May/June

• Finals
• What, there was supposed to be something else?

July/August

• I’m applying for this month long Summer school in Israel, where I hope to be conducting research at the world-renowned Weizmann Institute in Jerusalem. So yeah, hopefully this…
• I think my family are meeting my Israeli relatives at some point as well. France I think…
• And then it’s results time! Where I will find out what will happening for the next few months, and thus the next few years and thus, basically, the rest of my life. My feelings about this day are currently very much undecided…

September/December

• I will be finding out in August…

So yeah, this is my 2015 so far! I hope it looks as exciting and riveting to you as some of it looks to me.

I’ll probably do a post soon about music in 2015, because it looks AWESOME!!!!!

But until then…

Have a good evening! 😉