No picture, but exam results!

So, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve posted and a lot has happened in that time. I got my A-level results on Thursday and I am pretty pleased with how I did. I took AS Computing last year and got a B but I dropped it to continue Politics, English Language and Media Studies. I also took up AS Philosophy this year which was a challenge in itself. I managed to get:

• A2 Media Studies: B
• A2 English Language: B
• A2 Politics: C
• AS Philosophy: B

So combining that with my B last year, I managed to acquire 380 UCAS points. It turns out that I only needed 240 so I was very chuffed with what I actually got. I went to a couple of parties to celebrate and got a little bit drunk at a BBQ last night after spending all day co-editing a new video that we’ve made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULBU7uORhoc

There it is. I’m going to go now because Benidorm is on TV and I want to watch that. Bye.

Ninja exam

So, the title of the post may be a little misleading to some. This post is a combination of a Halo 3 wallpaper I did that includes a ninja and my A level results that will be arriving soon. There is no real ninja exam because the true ninjas that take it will chop the desks in half with ninja mind powers. This may also not be true.

Earlier this week, I found out how to do something really cool on Forge that allows your character model to have no weapons. A plus point on this is that it doesn’t involve hacking or modding in any way and is also incredibly easy to do. All you have to do is:

• Go into Forge mode
• Spawn a Battle Rifle (or any weapon other than your starting weapon which is AR by default)
• In monitor mode, look at the white diamond respawn point thing and turn into human
• Make sure that when you can pick up the weapon as human, if you turn into monitor, ensure that the cursor is still over the respawn point of the weapon
• When in human mode, pick up the weapon by pressing the Right Bumper and quickly turn into monitor mode
• When in monitor mode, press Y on the white respawn to delete the respawn point
• Turn back into human and voila! No weapon.

If I haven’t explained that fully, check out the video tutorial on youtube for a better explanation. PLUS it has moving pictures!

So yeah, haven’t been up to much these last couple of days and have actually been awaiting my A level results that I will get on Thursday. Now, I don’t need to do extremely well and I’m not exactly worried about whether or not I will have enough UCAS points to get into University, it’s just it feels a little bit out of my hands at the moment. I need to be able to say for certain what will happen to me for the next three years and it seems like it is out of my control for now. I’ve had dreams all of this week regarding my exam results and this has caused me to wake three or four times a night being anxious about the ‘big day’. A lot of people that I know who will also be receiving their results have actually shown great hatred towards me whenever I mention results day and tell me to, as they would say; “shut the fuck up“. I’ve never seen the big fuss surrounding exams and have never understood the anxiety that they appear to create. As students we are given so many leaflets by teachers and learning support advisers on the ’stresses of exams’. I have never understood the supposed stress surrounding the taking of exams but I now feel that I am well versed in the stress of the results.

Now, before you start thinking, “why should you be worried about the results if you weren’t worried about the exam itself?” Well, it’s that very reason as to why I’m nervous. I need to ask myself, “Why wasn’t I worried about the exams?”, “Was I being too optimistic or was it that I just didn’t know anything to be worried about?” These are the questions that have caused me much more anxiety than the ones on the exam paper.

The results that I get will determine what I will do for the next three years of my life. Will I sit around all day and wonder what I’ve done with my life, or will I fail my exams and get a job?

(New wallpaper what I made below. Click to enlarge!)

Click to enlarge.

Empty house and Halo 3

This week has gone past rather quickly but also very slowly at the same time. My parents have gone away for the week and have left us at home all by ourselves. Now, this was received with a mixed reaction for very good reasons. The positive side is that we don’t have our parents nagging us or telling us to be quiet when they’re trying to get to sleep. The negative side to them going away is the colossal levels of housekeeping that needs to be done. When you feel hungry, another side of you takes over that you never thought you had before. You start to use as little cutlery as possible and only use one glass a day. You start to nag if your dinner leaves you with bones on the plate that need to be thrown away in the bin or if you should really have the last of the milk because that then leaves you with a surplus of extra things that need doing. Take the milk example further. Having the last of the milk then requires you to rinse out the bottle, dispose of the lid, squash down the bottle, get out another bottle of milk and then taking a frozen bottle of milk and putting that in the fridge as well. It’s all extra work to do considering that you don’t need that glass of Nesquik.

Now that my parents are away, I don’t think to myself “Hooray, they’re gone!”, it’s more along the lines of “Oh no, they’re going to be back soon and we need to get the chicken off the ceiling.” Now, this isn’t to say that my parents are super clean freaks, they’re just a bit conservative about things. By conservative, I don’t mean a bunch of posh racists (oh the satire) but that they tend to expect a lot from us. My dad for example, takes things quite literally. When it came round to election time, I always ask, “Who did you vote for?”, his response is: “It’s a secret ballot for a reason.” Now, I can understand what he means, but I’m hardly going to start ringing up the Labour party in our local area and saying, “You know Br Ta? He voted for the Tories.” My dad has always taken things too literally. I remember one day going to the park and we were walking through a little woodland that they had behind it. We were going up a little footpath which came to a gate. On that gate was a sign that said “Warning. Running dyke ahead.” Now, this sign was warning us of a small river, but my dad has never let us go back since.

It’s not only the English Language that my dad can be conservative or literal about. In my house, our parents have never told us how much money they earn. The only way you could tell if my parents had had a pay rise was if the toilet paper was triple ply instead of double.

Seeing as my parents have been away, I’ve been playing less Halo 3 and I have been more concerned with the washing up and if the dishwasher needs emptying. I find it difficult to ensure that we have enough food to feed three people every night despite the fact that my parents have given us enough food to last through World War Three.

I’ve also made another Halo 3 Wallpaper. It really doesn’t take too long to do and is just the case of me finding a screen shot and then placing some shitty LOLCats writing over the top. Although, I must say that I have done a sterling job…

Click to enlarge.

Tidy up and some Halo 3 wallpapers

Righty-ho. I haven’t posted for well over a week and I think that a new post is well overdue. Sorry that I haven’t posted but we’ve had freak storms over here and it has made my internet say no. You could believe that version of events, or go by your instinct in that I am lazy and may have not just bothered. If I were you and were to put money on it, I would hedge my bets on the latter. Not that I am lazy or anything, I just… ok, I can’t be bothered to make up another story.

In the time that has lapsed between this post and the last, not a lot has happened. I bought Ninja Gaiden 2 and it was fucking epic. I’ve finished it on “Acolyte” (yeah yeah, so what if it’s the easiest setting?) and I have to tell you that this game is tricky. I mean, if it wasn’t for the unrelenting boss fights in the last several chapters (we call them levels but Team Ninja pretentiously calls them ‘chapters’. It’s not a fucking book.) this game would have been a cake walk (but why would anyone do that? (private joke)). If you haven’t finished the game and don’t want the story ruined well then you should stop reading.

The last couple of chapters are intense and rely on the player having some sense and buying plenty of health items whenever they can. Don’t worry about upgrading all the weapons, the Tonfas are shit no matter their level. I played this game with two weapons exclusively. I used the Dragon Sword which is your starting weapon and the Lunar Staff, the second weapon you get. Those are the only weapons you need so don’t worry yourself with upgrading the others and trying to work out if you can afford to upgrade them. Don’t bother.

Today, I went to my mate’s house to help him sort out his new PC. He has a new PC that is running Vista and I have to say that it is very impressive. I know that there were teething problems with Vista, but there were the same issues with XP when it was initially launched. In honour of his new PC, I decided to clean my PC up a bit as my desktop was a huge mess of icons and images that I never look at. I cleaned up my desktop and even went into add/remove programs and removed a good dozen.

After I cleaned my desktop, I felt like I needed a new wallpaper so I had to go and find one. Now, being the ego-centric fool that I am, I chose some of my own Halo 3 screen shots and then re-sized them to fit on my screen and even added nice little wide-screen bits to make it look professional.

I have no idea what to do now, but I feel that I may play Halo or even start Ninja Gaiden 2 again. I’m not sure. I also decided to post up two wallpapers that I have made and maybe you can use them on your desktop. If you do, leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

The Tyrant Microsoft stamps on little nation Bungie

Well, what can I say? 12 hours left on the clock and then Mr Harold Ryan has to post and tell us that Microsoft has shit all over their plans, once again. First it was the pushed deadline of Halo 2 and now the lack of an announcement that was going to blow us away.

“We realize that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment.”

And disappointed we are…

Bungie.net wtf?

Well, this thing really has started to get interesting. If you didn’t know, Bungie.net has been plagued for the past several weeks by the ‘Super Intendent’ who has been assuring members to “KEEP IT CLEAN”. He does so in an Incredible Hulk green font and has even told one member to be careful and ‘use stairs in case of fire’. Much more recently, the SI left the hidden message in his posts to reveal the date of the 14th of July at 10.30. This was when the Microsoft conference at E3 was so many people expected an announcement of some kind. However, the one thing that did change, is the homepage of Bungie.net where there now appears to be messages by the SI displayed in the centre and a countdown in the bottom right corner that is set to expire tomorrow. Now, I have never really been too involved in the Halo ARGs as they seem to be way too complicated and US dependant for me to care about. However, this one is different as it has been shoved right in our faces.

The Super Intendent’s avatar

This kind of posting has actually been going on for a while now and in the weekly updates there have been several “communication failures”. These have all been building up for a while now and I really can’t wait to see what happens to Bungie.net tomorrow. Have a look for yourself on Bungie.net.

Anyway, I haven’t been up to much since my last post because I am off on holiday until the end of September so I don’t really have that much to do. I started playing Pokémon Diamond again (it’s not that bad, I mean, I could be playing that shitty Barbie game instead (if I had it (which I don’t.))) I’m also trying to improve my time on the Rubik’s cube and getting myself to a constant 1 minute 30. I’m pretty much there but I get let down by my sticky and stuck Rubik’s cube. Grrrrr.

Dr Who, Super Smash Bros and Dr Who

It has been a very long time since I’ve actually made a post. I haven’t been up to much but I am eagerly awaiting the return of my older brother who is finally coming back from Uni after 3 years so I’m a little happy about that. I also have Super Smash Bros. Brawl and it is awesome. It really does bring back memories of when I used to play it back on the GameCube and even Nintendo 64. Unlocking all of the characters was somewhat easier than in previous installments but the fact that there are 35 characters to choose from can make for some very interesting fights. I used to be a big fan of Marth but they changed him and his B move is different This meant that I tried different characters and I have found Sonic to be really good and playable.

Anyway. Moving on from SSBB, I want to talk about Dr Who. I haven’t talked about three episodes now so I think I shall do a little re-cap.

Midnight - Was probably the best episode of this series so far. There was no CGI, no monsters and just class-A acting (maybe something to do with the fact that Catherine Tate wasn’t in it). This episode was emotive and also left some loose ends that may well be tied up later on. I watched this episode on the BBC i-player at 1am by myself in a dark house and I had to keep looking over my shoulder.

Turn Left - This episode was absolutely shit. Not the shit, just shit. It was a lame “what-if” episode that just had Russel T Davies wasting time before the next ’shit-hits-the-fan’ season finalé. Not much to say here apart from “What’s that on your back? It looks like a shitty prop!”

The Stolen Earth - Hmmmm. Although I have complained in the past about Mr Davies using the Daleks as a safe bet season finalé, but this time it’s different. No expenses spared on the CGI front with an absolute amazing panoramic view of 27 planets floating in the same piece of space. The Daleks still look good but the laser that kills people still looks like shit. The one good thing, the one little ray of light at the end of the tunnel came in the form of the light emitted from David Tennant when he started to regenerate. I hope that he does regenerate into someone else. John Simm and James Nesbitt have been rumoured, but I would personally like to see Alan Davies or Stephen Fry. They would make very interesting Doctors. Despite my hopes of anyone replacing Tennant they may be quashed by the fact that Tennant has already stated that he would be in the Christmas special and the 2009 series. Looks like Tennant is here to stay.

Although, they could all be elaborate cover ups in order to surprise everyone. I doubt it, Russell T Davies isn’t that creative.

Exams and feeling unwell

Ok, so no funny image about Dr. Who today but that’s because I am so tired. I had to get up at 6.45 today and will have to do that tomorrow. I know that it isn’t too hard to get up at that time, but after 3 weeks of getting up at 11.30 it was very exhausting adjusting to this new time. Just a small little update today (you’re safe from a 500 word rant today) as I have exams for the rest of this week. I had two exams today and I have another one tomorrow. I then have an exam every day this week until the 20th (Friday). I don’t feel that well at all and have a massive cough and a bunged up nose. I blame this on a combination of hay fever and sleeping under an open window.

My exams didn’t go too badly today, I was just very bored and nearly fell asleep in the exam. Falling asleep in exams is something I tend not to do due to the fact that I am in the exam hall for a reason. I might as well honour that reason. After my exams I went to the pub and drank two pints of Strongbow in quick succession. I felt very tired after that.

I want the end of the week to appear as if by magic and cast me goodbye from the monotony of exams.