MMF2'd!

MMF2 is out! Gibber, burble. And I'm supposed to be arranging BitTorrents of the demo versions, but I can't tear myself away from experimenting with the new Layers feature.

Chop Suey

Last night, I made an astonishing discovery while browsing the Knightmare fansite - Paul Boland, who was one of the higher-up members of the Multimedia Fusion community a couple of years ago, was on a team picked to appear on Knightmare back in 1993. I was reading the summary of his studio visits and practically fell off my chair when I saw the bit at the bottom.

Next, YouTube. Even though quite a lot of the site constitutes an extreme danger to life force and shouldn't be viewed under any circumstances, I find it amazing how many rare videos make their appearance on there. No Knightmare or The Crystal Maze yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. I was searching for Prince of Persia speedruns, though, and there are a frightening amount of "music videos" with the later PoP games matched up with Linkin Park and Evanescence. This must be stopped.

I did come across a video of a scene from Saw 2 combined with sound from The Crystal Maze, though. I'm not going to link to it as it's quite graphically disturbing, but it worked unsettlingly perfectly. The only disadvantage is that eventually, someone from Channel 5 is going to watch it =/

Furthermore, I would like to award Sierra recognition for creating the most useless error message window in the world. The fatal and unrecoverable "System error" is that the right disk hasn't been inserted. Additionally, look at the options provided.

I know this is a rather ADD post, but MMF2 will be out later today and I haven't been this excited since Java 5.

Neighbour

The constant barrage of noise from my downstairs neighbour became too much for me today, as the entire left hand side of the flat is now vibrating and I'm worried about bits falling off the bathroom. I went down and asked him (quite politely, I thought, given the circumstances) if he could reduce it. He asked back, in his outrageous thick accent, if I had a baby. I said no, but that I was trying to work. He just concluded that "You are strange, I think" and closed the door on me.

So I killed him. Smashed his stereo over his head, then dragged his body upstairs to get rid of the evidence. I then peeled his skin off with a handy kitchen knife, and stretched it out to form new membranes for my own speakers, revelling in the irony of it all.

Well, I didn't really do that, in case any prospective employers are reading this and think I'm mental. But is there anything I can do about this?

MMR'd!

I am now right in the middle of suffering from my yearly complete inability to write music. Nothing that I put down seems to sound quite right, whether it's for the latest game project or for stand-alone songs. The nearest I've got was when I wrote what I thought was quite a good chorus, only to later discover that Michael Weikath had written something dangerously similar about twenty years ago.

I've just got back from having my MMR booster, as there was some doubt as to whether I'd had the second one or not. The nurse also told me that I had two different dates of birth on record - unbelievably, the other David Newton from AMH is still following me around, and his records were mixed in with mine.

Finally, I went to the bank and transferred some money across to Whitney's account. I've been slightly worried about money recently, but fortunately, Computer Science has aided me once again and I have been paid an obscene amount for doing up a website. Transferring it was some task, though - I was being assisted by a hunt-and-peck typist who didn't know where the Shift key was, and it took the entire staff of the bank clustered around one screen making suggestions to her to finally get the transfer through. Even though the receipt says it went to "mechanic bank" instead of the Mechanics Bank, I was happy enough that she at least got the account number right in the end.

Food Glorious Food

Now that I'm living alone, one of the greatest concerns that's been on the minds of Whitney and my mother has been my basic survival with regard to being able to cook and eat for myself. My mother has left a variety of food from her visit, most of it unusually healthy for me, so I will have to work out some way of cooking potatoes that don't come in powder form.

Being worried about my cooking may be justified - I am admittedly the only person I know to regularly use a claw hammer as a kitchen utensil - but there is a bigger problem that isn't anything to do with my method of food preparation.

First of all, I've been colourblind all my life. This, combined with the way that I unburdened myself with most of my sense of smell during two years in the Purdie Chemistry labs, means that I have very little facility for telling whether food is off or not. Some things are easy enough - milk is probably undrinkable when it slides out of the carton instead of pours, for example, and carrots are off when you can tie knots in them - but there have been times when I've taken a bite out of something, asked Whitney "Does this smell all right to you?", and she's collapsed into a corner.

So assuming that I don't die from eating out of date smoked ham, the next stage is to be able to cook individual items into something resembling meals. Thanks to my job at the Kintore golf club a couple of summers ago, I am able to cook, but only by using a gigantic hotplate and deep fat frier. Even with more conventional, non-Scottish kitchen equipment, I think that the main downfall of my cooking is the willingness to experiment. Chicken korma with pasta? Works fine. And why not do it with Udon noodles, because they're basically the same thing, aren't they? And there's still some salami in the fridge, so I can chop that up and add it to the curry. It's meat, after all.

That said, there's still a pizza in the freezer, so I'll have that tonight and I'll at least live to fight another day.

Mr Torture

Like I completely forgot to mention previously, I had a medical appointment in London yesterday as part of the process for being allowed a visa - I assume that they have to check that I am indeed human. had gleefully hinted at how painful and perverse the whole thing was going to be earlier, but nothing remotely torturous was done at all - it was just a check of eyes, stomach, lungs, and skin on my hands. It was all a bit of an anti-climax, in fact.

The most difficult bit (apart from trying to complete the Sudoku puzzle in the waiting room) was getting my chest X-rayed, because I'd never had that done before and I found it very difficult to stand correctly with every inch of my front against a cold plate. The only real worry came when my stomach was being prodded and the examiner made a confused face as if he had found it was in the shape of a balloon giraffe, but he told me that I was perfectly healthy at the end of it.

And I stayed with Whitney's aunt while I was there - I did ask about hotel rooms when I was in Victoria Station, but when I told the woman that my budget was £50 a night and under, she told me to go away and stop wasting her time. Great people in London.

Now I'm back and just have to send more mountains of forms to the embassy, but the lists of things to send that they've given me bears very little resemblance to the forms that our immigration lawyer has told me to give to them.

The flat seems a bit empty without Whitney.

Another New Project

I have finally faced up to one of my worst fears. Yes, I've completed Ecco the Dolphin. I had to hurry up and complete it today, as Whitney's flying back to California tomorrow and I would be too terrified to start it up alone.

What I'm mostly going to be doing while stranded here waiting for my visa is working on another new project. Two years ago, it was Crystal Towers, and last year, the similarly-titled Treasure Tower began to take shape. This game doesn't have a name yet, but is going to be what I'm calling a "semi-remake" of Apogee's platformer Secret Agent.

The original game was a fairly simple platformer that involved completing several objectives on each level. The only trouble was that all the levels had the same objectives, so I'm trying to introduce a bit more variety in this update. Missions will include things like sabotaging a broadcasting centre that has the aim of putting Jeremy Beadle back on television, and replacing a consignment of Prawn Cocktail crisp flavouring with something more palatable.

This is actually a joint project, as someone else from the community is working on most of the difficult graphics that I can't be bothered with. To get a feel for the kind of game levels I'm looking for, I've been reconstructing one of the early levels from the original. It'll probably stay in the final game as a secret stage, or something like that. If you can remember as far back as 1991, here are two screenshots for comparison:



This is the level from the original SAM1, in all its garish glory. Surprisingly, it doesn't look that loud when you're actually playing it.


The updated game has a gloomier look to it, and a couple of added features, but is essentially the same thing. (You may notice a couple of slightly unfinished sprites.)

Apart from showing it off, though, I have a request for thoughts - at the end of each level, a number of score bonuses will be possible depending on things you did on the level. In a tribute to Apogee's Rise of the Triad, I have included a "Republican Bonus" which is obtained by destroying all the plants on a level. Trouble is that I can't think of a similar jab for the Democratic Bonus - has anyone got any ideas?

A new record!

My mother sent me nineteen emails this morning. A new record!

The reason for the sudden burst of activity is that the US Embassy have finally broken free of the Vogon-like standards of efficiency that they've displayed so far and sent me the visa forms. My medical appointment is now booked for Monday, and it looks like I'm going to easily be able to get a fiancee visa in time for the end of July, unless there are any huge disasters.

From life's RPG log

> Entering St Andrews...
> David uses Illegal Parking ability!
> David acquires Graduate Gown.
> David rolls against Running Back To Car Before Anyone Notices.
> Roll successful!
> David encounters Pink Chinchilla!
> David hits Pink Chinchilla for 94 damage!
> Pink Chinchilla is defeated!
> David acquires Graduate Hood (Fur Trim).
> Entire department of Computer Science joined the party.
> The party encounters Vice-Chancellor!
> Vice-Chancellor attacks using Latin!
> Vice-Chancellor hits using John Knox's Pants for 2 damage!
> David escaped successfully!
> David LEVEL UP!
> David is now a Graduate!
     Can now use letters BSc, Hons, CS
     Bonus to CV Appeal: +10
     Bonus to Ego: +1048576
     Student Discount ability is no longer effective

Thump thump thump

The idiot neighbour is now weeding his garden while shirtless, with his stereo on at full volume so he can hear it from outside. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that this approach also makes the music audible to the rest of the town (although dignifying it with the term "music" might be going too far). People like this deserve to be shot. Slowly.

After a delay of a week, the embassy have bothered to reply to the email I sent them to inform me once again that they have no idea who I am or have any record of my case. But once they eventually find it, we have been assured by our unbelievably expensive immigration lawyer that things will proceed much more quickly. And that's just as well, because we've only got a month left.

I finally saw last week's Doctor Who last night, and despite the comical similarity to Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, the Absorbaloff (and just about everything in the episode after seeing it) actually prevented me from sleeping. I later discovered that it was created by a nine-year-old boy. He's going to grow up into another H.P. Lovecraft.

Enthusiasm Out of Bounds

BANG BANG BANG BANG (from downstairs). Is it actually illegal to kill rap fans? Actually, I can hear someone frantically knocking on his door now. I can't imagine how someone can stand that much thumping. Of course, I could always phone up Nils to sort him out, and then we'd find out how much thumping he really can take.

But there is a lot of good news, in the form of the information on MMF2 that has finally been given out - have a look at this! Independently scrolling layers with separate scrolling coefficients! Alpha channels! Acceptable sound support! Scalable, rotatable active objects! With alterable strings! And unlimited global variables! Syntax highlighting! The useless Step Through Editor scrapped and replaced with a debug mode! External file management! Gradients that actually work!

I can't believe I'm this excited about what is essentially an IDE, but I'm now checking the site roughly hourly to see if the demo has been put up yet.

Limozeen - Keeper of the Seven Keys Part III: The Legacy

It's been absolutely ages since I wrote an album review. In fact, it's been a while since I bought any albums, but I've been provided with a few by my brother. The most notable of them is this, Helloween's continuation of the double concept album that they started all the way back in the 80s, with the return of the Keeper of the Seven Keys, who looks like something out of Doctor Who.

Helloween are credited as the founders of power metal, and have also gained a reputation for being resolutely insane. On listening to various parts of this album, I decided that this reputation was entirely justified (although I had had my suspicions before, what with previous album titles including Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Rabbit Don't Come Easy). Slightly desperately, The Legacy comes on two discs even though it could easily fit on one - Iron Savior's Unification was quite a bit longer and still managed to squeeze on to one extended CD. But once you've ripped it to your hard drive it doesn't really matter, does it?

As I'll frequently mention throughout all this, it now seems that things have come round in a circle and Helloween are now emulating the sounds of the very bands that they inspired twenty years ago.

---

1.1: The King for 1000 Years: 8/10 Unusually, the album starts off with a fourteen-minute epic that's very similar to the original Keeper of the Seven Keys. Things like this are normally best left until the last song or so (though I don't exactly follow my own rules). Most of the song is enjoyable, though the actual "King for 1000 Years" section sounds too overdone and tuneless - it does make up for it by coming up (eventually) with an amazing string-led ending with glass-shatteringly high vocals. Another slight problem is the Sonata Arctica-style narrator at the beginning, which isn't a bad idea in itself, but unfortunately has a rather pronounced Northern accent.

1.2: The Invisible Man: 9/10 I liked this one immediately. It's hampered by a daft-sounding growl near the beginning, but the chorus more than makes up for it. It doesn't seem to be much to do with the Invisible Man himself, but is more a continuation of Henjo Richter's Guardians of Mankind idea (though admittedly I haven't read the book) - the religious tone of the song feels very much like Gamma Ray. And the ending is a Stratovarius-like minute-long fadeout to get the song up to seven minutes - even though it's uncharacteristic of the band, there's a nice piano solo while it's going, though. It's easily the best song on the album. Listen to it!

1.3: Born on Judgement Day: 7/10 I know I mentioned Stratovarius only a line ago, but this song could easily have been written by Timo Tolkki. Though almost identical to Freedom, I'm Still Alive, etc., this is catchy enough if you ignore the chorus lyrics. I'm slightly divided on whether the immense drum solo in the middle works. It's "dedicated to all people in Brazil" and was written in 2004, but even after extensive research on the Internet I can't see the connection.

1.4: Pleasure Drone: 6/10 This song goes at a steady 6/8 bounce for a change of pace. There's nothing that I can find that's actually wrong with it, but somehow I just don't find it very interesting.

1.5: Mrs. God: 7/10 Mrs. God is something of a guilty pleasure. The lyrics sound exactly like the kind of American teen-rock that I've always despised, but Helloween somehow manage to get the idea to work, with a instantly classic guitar melody. Much has been made of how much the song sounds like Dr. Stein, but I don't really see the similarity apart from the rhythm in the chorus. One interesting point is that there is a scream at the end of the solo in the video version, but on the album, it's replaced with... well, this.

1.6: Silent Rain: 8/10 Unusually, this was written by Sascha Gestner, and has quite a different tone to it. If Dragonforce stopped playing at Warp Nine for a couple of minutes and calmed down a little during the verses, I think this is exactly what they'd sound like. Putting aside that, the chorus itself sound suspiciously like a remake of Eagle Fly Free. Nevertheless, it's a decent song, the C-section where Andreas' voice is distorted into something resembling Video Killed the Radio Star notwithstanding. The whisper at the end could have come straight out of Silent Force's Worlds Apart.

---

2.1: Occasion Avenue: 6/10 The second disc begins with the sound of the narrator muttering to himself and winding through brief snatches from Helloween's old songs - Keeper of the Seven Keys, Halloween and Eagle Fly Free are among the ones included. I have absolutely no idea what most of this song means. There's a bit in the middle where it sounds like they're trying to be Dream Theater - a theory backed up during the section of the track sung in Latin. If that doesn't scream pretentiousness, I don't know what does.

2.2: Light the Universe: 6/10 Now, I'm not saying that female voices don't work with metal - look at Tarja Turunen, for example - but Candice Night just has completely the wrong voice for this song. In fact, I admit I hadn't heard of her before she appeared here, but her website looks uncomfortably mad from first glance. It's about time I said something positive, though, so the pre-chorus and solo sound very good indeed. It's a reasonably good ballad.

2.3: Do You Know What You Are Fighting For: 5/10 This is a more jazzy piece than normal, and is played at a much slower pace than the rest of the album. I'm honestly not sure whether I like this or not.

2.4: Come Alive: 4/10 In yet another unusual production choice, Come Alive opens with the sound of Andreas Deris playing Galaga, then being hit on the back of the head with considerable force. The song then blasts into a metalled-up version of the Galaga music. Anyone who knows me will have guessed that I would normally hail such an idea as the stuff of genius, but it really just doesn't work at all. A reasonable chorus prevents this from scoring lower, though, and it contains the obligatory mention of "Helloween".

2.5: The Shade in the Shadow: 4/10: You might be tempted to think this song is stupid from the title. Let's face it, you're right.

2.6: Get It Up: 6/10: This is a fairly standard metal-appreciation song, with the added peculiarity that it sounds like it was written by Jun Senoue. There's giving a happy tone to a song and completed overdoing it - while this isn't near as tragic as Crush 40's efforts with the idiot Poley, I think it's just a bit too enthusiastic. And it has an unnecessarily dodgy title.

2.7: My Life for One More Day: 7/10: The band switch back to upbeat melodic Gamma Ray-ness for the last song on the album. Initially I felt that the song wasn't interesting and that it felt like it was just there to round off the story, but it's definitely grown on me. The verse doesn't work particularly well, but yet again, the chorus saves it - you get the feeling that it could have sounded bigger, though.

---

So to summarize, because to be honest this is probably all that anyone will actually read, it starts off well but then gradually descends into mediocrity, only to pick up again at the end. Much like the band itself, in fact.

Everybody needs good neighbours

The visa situation is now approaching crisis point and I don't want to talk about it. What I would like to talk about is our new neighbours.

I was mildly perturbed to return to the house on Wednesday to find my gate had been combination-locked shut. We had seen them working on the fence the day before, but we assumed they were mending it. Quite apart from anything else, it's the most ineffectual lock in the world, as people can now turn the corner to the shared entrance and invade their property that way (as we have to, now that our entrance is inaccessible).

And this morning, we were woken up to the soundtrack for the terminally stupid, commerical rap. After feeling the floor vibrating in the bathroom and kitchen, we went down to ask them to turn it down to a normal, human level below a thousand decibels or so. The door was answered by a man with a French accent and shorts. And nothing else.

I thought that this only happened in halls.

Visa Troubles

After sending off a folderful of proof and information to the US Customs and Immigration Service in February, I thought that my application for a fiance visa was pretty much safe. It went through the National Visa Centre within about two days, but now that the process has moved to Britain, things have got much slower. It now looks like I'm going to have to delay travelling to the US, or abandon the current plan, go there without a visa, get married and come back again to organize one.

The problem began when I phoned the US Embassy here and they hadn't even heard of me. Apparently the applications take 10 to 15 days to reach Britain from the time they're sent, having been presumably strapped to the back of an elderly tortoise and pushed in the general direction of the UK. Once that's done, the embassy need to request another rainforestful of information, including a police certificate to prove I'm not a dangerous criminal, and a medical certificate to prove that I am indeed human.

Once that's done, they need to lose/burn/sit on the information for another month or so before finally inviting me to an interview. What happens with the visa after that is unclear, but I'm prepared to believe it'll be another few weeks before anything happens at all.

If you're applying for a visa at any point in the future, just be sure to do it about a year in advance, because the generous-seeming 120-day period estimated on the USCIS site is nowhere near enough time for them to get it sorted.

P.S. Aaaargh! Thank you.

Quotelog: Now Even More Online

I've just finished copy-and-pasting the last of the quotations over from the old text files, and this may be why my fifth finger is now exactly the same shape as the top of the Ctrl key. One thousand, two hundred and ninety-three copy and pastes, that took.

As I'd like as many people voting on this thing as possible to make up for the rearrangement of my finger, I've now written a Continuous page - this page displays only one random quotation at a time, and replaces it with a new one when a vote is cast. It's a quick way to browse at random, and encourages voting because of having to do it to continue (unless you use the Skip button).

I've also updated my main site to include the Quotelog, along with a couple of other bonus items - the collection of game FAQs that I've written over the last few years, and Kommon Room Kombat, which is really best seen rather than described.

Quotelog Online

Once again I have to thank everyone who gave their congratulations on the news in my last entry (which was rather concise and rather more smug than I had intended).

To celebrate, I've been doing what every other student does to celebrate - write another website. As recently posted some long-lost quotations taken from when I was away on holiday, I have set up a frontend for the near-legendary Sinner Quotelogs, which were recorded from my first year at St Andrews until near the start of my third. Actually, I've only put the first year in the database at the moment, but it was almost three thousand lines long and the tip of the last finger on my left hand is now approximating a square, so I think it's best to give it a rest for the night.

Most of the site is based on the similar Quotebook. Bonuses include the gigantic technological leap forward of being able to vote down as well as up, as well as the code itself being marginally less hideous. And you'll notice that the colour scheme is very much inspired by the site that started all of this in the first place. (But remember when it used to be blue?)

Of course, all the site needs now is a set of visitors to give their opinion on the archives of these snapshots of our online existences, so have a look at the Random page and click-war your own quotations to the top. (Note that users of decent browsers get a couple of additional minor aesthetic niceties.) And have a look at the Search feature as well. Useful terms to start off with are "fish", "jam", "television", "fulsome funbags" and "greenbo".

Shortest Post in the World

Qualification awarded: B.Sc. Honours First Class

Ace.

ISO

I realize that three posts in a day constitutes a veritable avalanche compared to my usual record, but does anyone have any recommendations for programs to create ISOs/other CD images? I have a pile of them beside me that I want to, er, back up. I know that the Internet's flooded with them, but I'd like to hear of any that you can recommend as working.

Speaking of burning, it's the hottest weather ever here - I think it might even compare to the heatwave that we experienced in Donington three summers ago. I'm off to fill the bath with ice cubes.

Colon, dash, capital O

Whitney just turned on the television this morning to be faced with Womble Chris and The Idiot Bodwin talking about online gambling. Apparently Chris regularly wins vast amounts of money from poker sites, making him worthy of being the focus of a morning news special. I'm not sure whether to be proud for the ex-Melvillites or still detest them because of having regularly woken me up by battering golf balls against the door to my section of the corridor during their stay there.

Hands that do dishes

Last year, just before Christmas, I purchased three bottles of Fairy washing-up liquid. Today, the first of them ran out. Looks like it really does last longer.

But after that, inspired by 's recent post about the classic Dieter Bohlen music videos that he has been busily uploading to YouTube, I went in search of other ridiculous 80s music, and wasn't disappointed. The highlight is a ludicrously over-the-top mimed video of Helloween's Dr. Stein, which is... how can I put this... unequivocally hilarious (especially Kai Hansen on the right with his daft sunglasses).

It really isn't difficult to see where the idea of Limozeen came from. But when the real thing is like this, who needs a parody?

The Non-Appearance of the Beast

Now that 6/6/06 has passed and we have all lived through the fourth projected apocalypse of our lifetimes (including Nostradamus night, the Millenium, and the other one in 2002 that I can't remember), I think I can safely write about that favourite among posts - the exam results report.

The story so far: I entered the last semester of university with a 16.4 average, on the sliding shapeless scale of 20 that is designed to be impossible to understand. Nevertheless, this was a frustrating position to be in, because in order to get a first, I needed to average 16.5 or above. So, in other words, everything relied on getting 17s this semester.

Professional and Social Aspects of Computing - 17.0

This ranks as the most unsurprising grade, as I already knew what I had for this course - it's one of the very welcome modules that don't have an exam at the end. Instead, all marks were based on turning up to lectures, listening and writing reports on what we'd learned (or just make it up). My grades for most of the practicals were distinctly average, but I managed a 19 in the all-important essay, bringing my mark back up to an acceptable level.

Computer Security - 17.8

Happily, this is the highest mark that I've ever received in an Honours module. While I felt the exam was reasonably easy, my grade was no doubt helped by the impossible pair of 20s that I got for my coursework. I imagine that because of the strike, the lecturer employed a quicker marking algorithm equating the grade to the number of pages written, or something like that.

Human Computer Interaction - 17.5

I could hardly have asked for a better mark in this course either. It's an example of the kind of course where there are no correct answers to anything, and you can only answer exam questions by making something up then trying to prove it by name-dropping as many famous HCI enthusiasts as possible. The exam is also the second paper in St Andrews to have almost made me laugh out loud while taking it, thanks to James' unique way of making up names for his example questions (MacroSoggy's Awffice suite, SuckLessInk, and of course TessCo with their T-1000 automatic checkouts - slogan "You'll be back").

Solitaire Specification, Simulation and Solution System - 17.0

I had been fully prepared for the project to bring me down a couple of points, as I thought that expecting a 15 or 16 for it would be optimistic - my supervisor didn't seem incredibly enthusiastic about it until very near the end. This constitutes a very pleasant surprise. In the past, I may have given the impression that Mr. Gent was a fairly rubbish supervisor who took very little interest in any of the acres or reports and code that I sent him on a regular basis. I now realize that he is a shining example of academic brilliance, master Solitaire player and possibly the greatest person who ever lived. (But his taste in shirts is still appalling, there's no way round that.)

Naturally, as soon as I got the results I grabbed a calculator and spent the next half hour working out various means and medians to make absolutely sure where I stood. In the end:

Weighted average for semester 2: 17.3
Weighted average for fourth year: 16.9
Weighted average for Honours: 16.6

A weighted average of 16.6 is just, just inside the definite area for getting a First.

Nothing's definite yet, though - for my actual classification, I'm going to have to wait until Saturday. However, after a long time navigating the labyrinthine St Andrews website, I was pointed to this reasonably helpful PDF document, which you can use to estimate your own classification, and it looks to me like things are pretty definite.

P.S.: Wine related carnage.

Start of Getting Married

This weekend, Whitney and I went up to my parents' house for the pre-wedding reception. I'd like to thank everyone who was there for turning up (particularly those who travelled most of the length of the country to do so), and especially to my parents for organizing the whole thing. And if I've just given you the address of this journal and you're reading it for the first time, welcome. Scroll back a while and read some entries. It will probably result in a completely wasted afternoon, but it's at least something to do.

The evening was a semi-surreal experience, as it seemed like everyone I knew were gathered in one room together - even those who I had never thought would meet before. It was also a chance to see friends that I hadn't seen since school four years ago, and it is very comforting to see that none of them have changed at all - visitors to the area seemed most surprised that I was very much the odd one out in my group of long-haired and tall classmates. And the band that was formed near the end of school have just finished recording their first album. It's all fairly amazing.

Music was provided by Celtacad, who used to be a school band when I was in it but has now broken free of the Academy, and my dad provided an elaborate and completely indestructable cake that he'd been working on for weeks. Friends of the family were incredibly generous with their gifts: we were given a number of things made out of glass, which will be a little awkward to transport to America but appreciated nonetheless; a significant amount of money, which was very much appreciated; and a haggis-whistle, which wasn't.

Thank you for coming. I now have a gigantic list of email addresses to collate, as I've promised to stay in touch with as many people as is humanly possible. And isn't that the true use of Livejournal? Come to think of it, no, it's to post endless memes and moan about life. But I think that this is a suitable alternative.

Memories of St Andrews

Today is the 1st of June. At the end of this month I'm going to be flying off to America to restart life as I know it once again. With that daunting thought out of the way, I'm going to take a while to reflect on the more unusual aspects of life at St Andrews that stick in my memory. I always say that it seems like only weeks since I arrived in AMH for the first time, but some of these seem like years ago now. And they were.

Chemistry - I never really understood Chemistry to be honest, but I spent half of my first two years in courses in the Purdie building, a significant amount of that time in the lab pouring acetone on to things or participating in pointless high-school-like newspaper/poster projects. I haven't really stayed in touch with the group I used to go around with, but I think Greg, Graeme and I deserve to be commended for our efforts in eliminating the Chemistry with Computer Science course from the year entirely.

Melville - I hated Melville at first, grew to love it, then gradually slipped back to hating it again by the time I left. But that middle section was quite nice. Now that the new Melvillites have proved themselves to be equally dysfunctional to the last lot, I can only conclude that there is something in the building or the food served there that gradually drives individuals to insanity.

Quake Jumps - On the Purdie stairs on the way to the Union every weekend (8:30 in the foyer). If you weren't there, you'll never know, and to be honest it's probably better that way.

Television Analogies - See the above. Pioneered by .

Air hockey - Before the rise of the DDR machine that would eventually take over a major part of my life in second year, air hockey was the game of choice despite the table being the worst in the world. In fact, I remember on my first day in St Andrews, I was part of a group of students previously unknown to each other who were united in an effort to unscrew the panel on the front of it just to retrieve the puck. Inevitably someone would spill a drink on the table as soon as it was cleaned, making playing it feel like dragging a paddle through treacle.

After-dinner Simpsons - The Simpsons on Sky 1 used to be virtually a requirement for Melville residents. was always immensely proud of the way he could correctly guess when it was going to start, and changed the channel from dreadful music videos at exactly the right time.

Empire pizza - Trips to Empire used to take place regularly on Saturdays, in the days when their pizza was excellent and didn't taste at all of soap. The highlight was being surprised at the lack of spice on the Spicy Chicken variety, then stepping up to Hot 'n' Spicy and discovering that it was actually a round flat thermonuclear device.

The butcher's shop that looks like it's come out of Silent Hill - I thought I would be used to it by now (I'm a meat-eater, after all), but the selection of half-pigs and cow carcasses hung up proudly in the window always unsettles me a bit. I've seen many tourists walk past it, do a gigantic double take and leap back in shock. Then stop and take a photo.

6am Melville fire alarms - Of course not. There are some good memories, though, such as Tom always jumping up to the top of the mound and saying something nonsensical about Steve the warden. Or, earlier than that, Kenny - who just stood at the front of the building and mumbled until we all got fed up. We had got a regular routine going, with guitars, drinks and seating being brought out so we could sing "Always look on the bright side of life" in the pouring rain. And there was that one time when we saw smoke billowing out of D-block, provoking a massive cheer as we thought the building really was on fire.

IRC - The Sinner IRC channel used to be a major part of my university experience, but after leaving it for a couple of days in third year I realised just how much more work I was getting done and decided to put it on hold indefinitely. Recently I've been missing it a lot, and have attempted to get my fixes in both the old ZZT community and the new attempt at a Click-related channel. In fact, though I haven't informed the community of this, I have also reinstated the famous Quotelog concept, and while it does contain some rather impenetrable in-jokes, you can find the short log over in my corner of the Internet. (If I feel like I have too much free time on my hands, I'll set up a bash.org-type frontend for the whole lot of them if you like.)

I'd like to point out one quotation from the old files in particular, as I don't think anything else in the world has ever so succinctly highlighted the continuing culture clash that exists in St Andrews.

g33|<3ry!!!!
damn, |< doesn't look anything like K
one would think it ought to
* Donald feels c|-|3373d!!!11
* Donald is getting into this whole dork-speak

Meeting Americans - It's been said that St Andrews is a colony of America nestled between Scotland and Norway, and my group of friends somehow always took in a significant number of JYAs. Therefore, I had a "British culture pack" on my shelf, containing videos of programmes such as Father Ted, Black Books and Red Dwarf, which were always either received with hysterics or stared at blankly until people got bored. (Bear in mind that this was back in the day when people actually used videos.)

The Lab - Who would have thought that I'd miss the windowless JH/SH lab at the top of the Jack Cole building? Despite its strong resemblance to Hell with flourescent lighting, we have slacked off work in innumerable imaginative ways there, from discussing the inconvenience of quantum mechanics to harnessing a robot up to pull a chair around the room.

More as I think of them.