I fell asleep last night at a really really early hour. I had too many days with too little sleep. I woke up finally this morning at 04:35 rather amazed at how blue the sky was. I quickly glanced at the news and read the bombshell that 8 out of the 10 current teams in Formula 1 have had enough of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley and are intending to make their own championship.

There are enough websites which explain how this has come about. What interests me is: If there is a breakaway series, what circuits will be raced, what kind of rules will there be, what aid will there be for smaller teams wishing to compete.

A good way to save money is not change the rules so drastically each year. R&D costs are by nature very high and if the rules and regulations change yearly, you end up spending money but not reaping the benefits for more than 4-8 months before you have to start again.

The Silverstone circuit is likely to want to be part of any new series, as they have been told repeatedly that they aren't going to be back on the F1 calendar for at least 17 years. Bernie Ecclestone said if Donington park isnt ready for when it takes over the British GP in 2010, then there just wont be one.

The fans are in agreement over the circuits fiasco, with there no longer being any F1 activity in North America, both of which would usually fully sell out of tickets. France cancelled their GP after prohibitive costs also. At the same time, exotic locations such as Turkey and Bahrain remain on the Calendar, yet there aren't many fans that care for the sport there. (At Turkey there was 40,000 spectators out of a max capacity of 150k).

I know a lot of people find politics in sport tedious, but i find it rather absorbing and interesting. I will be watching carefully what happens. I will quite likely watch both series' if any breakaway happens. I'll be focussing on the breakaway, but i cant wait to see ForceIndia and Williams fighting it out for the constructors championship.


Enough F1Bawwwwww.

I walked up the stairs and Oscar was sat there looking pretty. I remarked at how clear his face was (he usually has major snot problems around his nose) and he looked at me and blew a bubble out of his nostril !

I have a presentation to make today. I'm jotting down notes. The powerpoint half of the presentation has to be e-mailed off today. I have an interview next Wednesday. I've been focussing really hard on getting my college work done, that i haven't really been giving this the attention it really needs. Regardless, i will give it my all, and hopefully receive the sponsorship/job in question.

Tags: cats, formula1, update, work
Current Location: Leicester, uk, home.
Current Mood: excited

Today i have the day off from work. I know i only work 2 days a week, but it is very rare for me to have a Saturday off. I took it as holiday as, on Tuesday, it was my Mothers 50th birthday. Today is her party for her and her friends from work and the village etc. What's organised is a banquet at a Thai food restaurant. It should be pretty good. I helped too, kinda. As they wanted to have a champagne toast, i obviously insisted i chose the champagne. To be honest i cant say i have the opportunity to drink much champagne so i have little advantage over my Father choosing, except i know what's the best quality for the target price, and i know the differences in the mixes of grapes and the various differences between brut, demi-sec, doux, etc.

It's been mentioned that i now have to bring my camera along this evening. My sister has a better camera, and did a degree in photography/media, but didn't bring her camera along. I'm not a big fan of having to take photos of people, and at these functions i prefer to keep relatively discreet. However, i had best do as I've been asked.

I have put in my accommodation application to Nottingham University for when i go in September. I should find out where i'm going from April onwards. I put down 3 choices. The main halls on campus at Nottingham are pretty old school. The majority of them are 6 bedrooms sharing 2 showers, 2 bathrooms and a laundry room. They're either catered or have a kitchen to share as well. Most are catered. I'm (technically) a mature student, and i was kinda worried at the prospect of being stuck in a halls of residence with a bunch of 18 year olds who have never moved out before, drinking themselves into oblivion and generally being annoying, so my top 2 choices are self catered halls for both undergrads and postgrads. The rooms are more self contained with most of them being en-suite bathrooms. The drawback is that all of these residences are off campus. What's somewhat more inconvenient is that they are incredibly far away from the engineering block on campus too, so in one case I've got to walk the full length of the campus from halls to the block, which is a long way and over a lovely steep hill. Another case is i'll be actually based at a campus which is described as a 35 minute walk or a 15 minute bike ride to the edge of my campus. Luckily that brings me to the edge closest to the engineering buildings.

One thing is now for sure, i will be getting plenty of exercise. There are shuttle buses to take also, and most of them are free so i cannot complain.

We ran out of tea the other day. After 2 days of no tea, i think we all got sick of having nothing but coffee, and new teabags were bought. I must say that these are lovely. So lovely that i actually managed to complete one of my 101 tasks (#92).

I've just started doing another one of my 101 tasks too, which is to take a photograph a day of myself for 60 consecutive days. I know many people do the same but for a longer duration of time, but i purposely made all my tasks achievable, i just had to put in the minimal amount of effort, which is often what i lack. I've made a new photo set on my flickr to upload them all to. So far there are only 2 photos, but i hope to upload daily.

Trigonometry, Linear Motion, Curriculum Vitae and Capacitance assignments to do before Wednesday. I best get busy.

Ciao

Tags: college, exercise, food, photography, uni, update, wine, work
Current Location: Leicester, uk, home.
Current Mood: content

It's Monday, and that means that i must procrastinate before doing some work.

I started watching ofmornings a few days ago. It's just a comm where people post pictures of what they had for breakfast. It's a great source of inspiration as i often find myself in the morning thinking, bleh what can i have to eat? The photos posted are quite cool too. It makes you hungry though.

As most of you probably have seen, mission101_2009 is also featured on the spotlight. I'm tempted to do it, but i doubt i could populate a good 101 list in less than 3 days, let alone one that would keep relevant for nearly 3 years. I may still give it a go though!

My Christmas was sedate (as i mentioned last post). I hadnt asked for much of anything material wise. So in due course, i got a cd (Anjunabeats Volume six), a book (Elephants on acid and other bizarre experiments) and a £20 note. My parents have agreed to help fund a travelling expedition for me next year, once i figure out where i want to go and if i can afford it. I'd like to meet a few of my friends in other countries.

Keeping on the holiday note, i have about 5 days of holiday to take before the end of March at work. Considering that i only work 2 days a week currently, that is about 3 weeks off work. I may just take most of January off work? i don't see the weather getting substantially better in February or March, so i don't think I'll be missing out on much.

What am i intending to do for new years? fuck all. I cant be arsed with much at the moment for some reason. Motivation is pretty dire, and my mood is hardly in party-mode.

Tags: food, music, new year, travel, update, work
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Bad Loop - ystaevae

My sleep patterns are buggered. I went to bed at nearly 5am this morning, and woke up at 15:30 (3:30pm). This is far from ideal before my college days as i have to wake up at 6am at the latest, and this routine is hard to adapt to with this kind of sleeping pattern!

I woke up on Monday at about 11am. I was determined to sit down and get my Maths assignment done and dusted. I first made some lunch, came back upstairs, then had further distractions in the form of a skype convo which lasted a good hour or so. I finally started my Maths at around 4pm. I managed to finish it by 9ish, The only time consuming bit was drawing. The questions themselves are very easy.

My only job today is to do some research into simple harmonic motion, in particular resonance, so i can do a talk on it at college on Thursday. I already have a fair bit, but i don't have power point installed on this pc, so i am going to have to jot down all my key points and have them typed up on Wednesday, which is far from ideal.

Speaking of jobs, Its 9 days until Christmas. There's a fuckload of overtime at work, and i really really am not that interested. Curious, as in previous years i've been there cashing in as much as i can. I wonder why i'm so apathetic this year. Might be because my manager is on the sick, or i'm just sick of the company at the moment. Who knows? I'm sure i can find something better to do. Say, read a book perhaps?



What a boring update :\

Tags: college, overtime, sleeping patterns, work
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Elnur Hüseynov & Samir Cavadzad? - Day after day

I'm back at college tomorrow. I was off last week due to illness. Something that i do not regret as such, but I have a feeling I'm going to have quite a job to catch up today and tomorrow.

I'm kind of frustrated. I know what i want to do, and i pretty much know what i need to do to achieve it, but i do not seem to be able to actually tackle any of the objectives i need to do. For what seems to be months, possibly because it has been at least a month, I've been writing my personal statement. It should be easy peasy. 4000 characters long, write about yourself as to why you are the best person to be on this course, and how wonderful you are. Well that's just it, I suck at saying how great i am (unbelievable at times i know). So I've written 2000 characters worth and have totally stalled. I know i'm missing stuff out, and I'm sure i can write more, but nothing flows. When i write about stuff that i know about, i could write forever! Most of my assignments start off too long, and i have to edit and edit again to shorten them and remove the irrelevant stuff.

I woke up this morning afternoon and was very keen to get some college work done. I looked for my next maths assignment tracking sheet, but couldn't find it. This was strange as I'm sure i received it. It's kind of annoying as it is supposed to be a really nice and easy one to get done before Christmas. Essentially it's all level 2 work (GCSE level). I remember the first question was like, draw these triangles and describe them or something stupidly easy. Well failing that, i grabbed some science worksheet which is an assessment we're doing in class. As I'm a week behind, i thought i had best get this finished to ensure I'm not catching up too much tomorrow. Looking at the sheet, however, i couldn't make heads or tails of it without having to read through the previous 10 pages of scribbles.

"If r1 became short circuit, what effect would it have on the voltage across r1, r2, r3 and r4 ?"

"Explain the relationship between the applied voltage and the individual voltage drops in the circuit." 

This should be easy, but my brain is dead. It's a giant cabbage encased in a skull. How very disappointing.

I e-mailed my tutor last week saying i wont be in due to illness, and to send me any worksheets that i would've been doing in mathematics. She keeps all the worksheets in electronic format so this should be no problem. Annoyingly i didn't even get a response as an acknowledgement of receipt of my e-mail, never mind work sheets. I understand she's a very busy tutor, and she has a huge workload, but this was just annoying.

I wonder if i got a load of work that i needed to do, and got myself into an environment where i could solely focus on the work (ie, not at home) i could finish it all in one massive haul and have a few weeks rest?* Perhaps i could see if i could go to work with my Father. I have a feeling that university libraries are quieter than FE colleges, where libraries are seen as some sort of hang out place to catch up on what happened at the weekend!


So yes. College in the morning. I should wake up in about 4-5 hours to ensure that i am there on time. I don't feel tired. It'd be unwise for me to stay up all night though as i will be incredibly tired by midday tomorrow. I wish lessons were starting now. I'm awake, I'm alert. I could quite possibly get some work done! Just let me get some clothes on first!

I'm paranoid I'm wasting time and opportunities! argh!


*or do a shed load of overtime for the ££££


Music for you: Jaytech - Pepe's Garden

Looooovely feel good tune. I just want to dance to it, preferably on a beach on a summer's morning!

Tags: engineering, math, music, overtime, sleeping patterns, update, work
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: frustrated

BOSH it hits your nose from the first sip. I am presuming that's from the brandy fumes. I had a bit of an annoying day. Today i had some training for student liaison representing. and I put the date into my phone. with me being a fucktard i went into town today, went to college and nothing was on. i had no idea what room it was supposed to be in, as all it specified was E block, the old library. Well that building alone has 40 rooms! After asking at the information desk in the next building, i gave up and went back into town. I figured i had best make some use of this time in town, and started doing some Christmas shopping. Now my younger and older Brother have had their presents bought, and my Fathers too. Just my Mother and my Sister's to buy now.

Back to the BOSH. I have now got a nasty cold. It's one of those ones where it feels like your sinuses have been pumped full of cement and your joints go all stiff. On top of this i have a lovely cough, and tonsils that i swear are competing in size with another round-ish pair of objects that are part of my body (if you said eyes, you are sooooooooo innocent!). After i returned from Christmas shopping, i got the bus back to where i parked, which was work. I went into the shop and bought 3 bags of lemons. I got a few strange looks from my colleagues, and the lady at the checkout accused me of hosting a lemon party. Not that i know what one of those is. I e-mailed my tutor saying that no way am i going to be in college this week, and please send me whatever coursework via e-mail to do. I am struggling to do any outstanding coursework as i cant concentrate with such swollen sinuses and achy joints.

So i come home, i juice 2 lemons, which fills almost half a mug full of lemon juice. I dunk in what's left of the honey, and top up with hot water. I was going to buy some brandy at work but then i remembered i have some Armangac still at home. It's very classy brandy for what i'm using it for. So now i've drank it, do i feel the effects of the lemons?.... nope. Do i feel the effect of the honey?..... nope. Do i feel the effect of the brandy?.... kinda..

This is re-assuring i guess? I think i'll go to the chemists tomorrow and buy something proper to de-congest, soothe and heal me!

My actual student liaison rep training is tomorrow, but after e-mailing my tutor saying i shant show, i dont think i'll go to this either. I'll have to have it rescheduled also i suppose!


( How I've been spending the free time that i don't have. )

Tags: college, photography, sick, update, work, world of warcraft
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: sick

Cawf, Cawf, Splutter, Sniffle.

Late night updates, i warn you now, have a tendency to start of nice and focussed and become rambling messes almost instantaneously.

First! the boring stuff. Work.

My hands are sore as anything. I've been working so hard that the skin on my hands is red raw and have lots of cuts.

When the government reduces value added tax (sales tax) by 2.5%, what affect does it have on you if you work in retail?

Oh i dunno, 13,600 price decreases to be sorted out. Labels, labels labels!



Righty. The weather has been weird. It's cold, though i'm talking about the British standard of cold (i add this due to a few readers of my journal being Finnish, Russian and Polish, and if i start moaning about it dropping to -1'c i'll be ridiculed!).

We had a strange weather front, which brought thick dense fog in at lunch time on Friday. Fog usually comes in overnight, so it's there early morning and burns off during the day, or creeps in in the evening. The damn stuff lasted a couple days too. Fun to drive in.

I'm still waiting for a reply from Bath university in regards to one of the courses i am considering applying to there. if i haven't received a response by end of Monday, i'll give them a ring.


Well, i was going to make that post longer, but i'm too tired. If i wake up early enough tomorrow, i'm sure to babble some more! possibly with screenshots (as opposed to photographs)

Tags: college, sleep, uni, weather, work, world of warcraft
Current Location: Leicester, uk, home.
Current Mood: sick
Current Music: The Faint - The Conductor (Thin White Duke

I'd make an awful scientist, as they usually sit on results for ages whilst they interpret them and can prove that they're not anomalous.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through doing my Time Management assignment for college, and although i've not done my write up yet (which will be the important bit), i have got 2 weeks worth of data which i have started grabbing statistics from.

I have split my week into 5 categories. These categories are:

Class Contact time - When i have to be in class, and am.
College Work - This is any studying or college work outside of college hours.
Sleep - Zzzzzzz
General Recreation - Ambiguous term with good reason. It covers almost everything from computing, exercising (as if that happens), being lazy, listening to music. Anything that i do, but could quite easily be cancelled immediately to do something more important.
Essential activities - Aren't many of these as i don't live alone. This includes cooking, showering, paying bills, commuting and all contracted work hours, amongst other things. Basically things i cannot avoid or put off as they are, essential!

( Lies, damn Lies and Statistics. under the cut. )

Tags: college, geek, learn, sleeping patterns, work
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Eelke Kleijn - Ondine

I'm ill. It's a weird illness. I've got sinus's that feel like they're sand bags, i have a snuffly nose, and an intermittent sore throat/cough. I feel like I'm deaf in one ear. Furthermore whenever i sit down i have the strange sensation of vomiting everywhere. Luckily this symptom has yet to come to surface fully (pardon the pun).

What's really weird about this is that my energy levels are the utter opposite of what they should be. I should want to crawl into bed and sleep this off... BUT NO! I'm absolutely brimming with energy. I feel like crap, and i have a FUCKLOAD of energy. I fancy dancing around etc, potentially in the nude depending on the audience.

At work, a few other guys have this strange cold, including my manager and a few of my colleagues. My manager got tired of everyone wondering around looking gaunt faced (breathing through their mouths cos they cant through their nose) and went and bought some super max strength flu tablets.

He walks into the warehouse where 3 of us were and heard me groaning, and shouts...

"Who's for drugs then! Anyone fancy some drugs?! Get yer drugs here!"

Kabba, Adam, Ravi, Myself and my manager grab a tab each and go grab water out of the canteen.


It was funnier if you were there cos my manager is cockney so 80% How do you quantify that? of what he says is hilarious.

So as you may have taken note, I'm doing overtime this week, Monday and Tuesday 1600-2200. Its easy work, basically prepping for promo change for grocery. After 20:00 it's dead on the shop floor so it's all a good laugh.

---

I went to Wagamama for lunch. My Mother bless her offered to take me seeing as i asked if she was going into town so that i could pay for storage and enquire about reducing the size of storage i have wehey logic(!) I had some sort of beef steak noodle thing which was tasty. It was the first time i had seen the Highcross centre since it had been finished. The Highcross is a shopping quarter extended and including an old mall in the centre of Leicester. It looks pretty good actually, i couldn't believe i was in Leicester for a while cos it was so... new? Walking back to the car along High Street was strange too. They pedestrianised the street during redevelopment of the city centre. I have vivid memories of walking along it to catch the bus to work at 4am. Where there was speed tables and bus stops, were trees, bins, benches. I found it almost disorientating.

I am posting this blog hopefully before my LoudTwitter kicks in with its post. I tweeted a lot today, about not very much to be fair. Lots of pictures, and a few videos. The videos i wouldn't have tweeted about but it does it automatically.

The pictures i took in Leics:
  

Another post to come when more content is available i guess!

Tags: food, overtime, sick, work
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: sick
Current Music: DJ Moo - V Mix-Dark Times (D I G I T A L L Y - I M P O R T E D - Vocal Trance - a fusion of trance,

Before i start, the term college in the UK refers to any education establishment you go to after 'school' and isn't university. Diplomas, and other qualifications are given out there, but not degrees as such.

Anyhow, my timetable is of interest to the morbidly curious.

I have college 2 days a week, but this is classified as a full time course because it is SO HARDCORE. Or so my tutor keeps re-iterating. I think a few of my fellow students on my course are retards already, and there are some who are grossly overqualified.

Amongst the grossly over qualified include fully qualified electrical installation engineers, who's had enough crawling through attics and wiring plug sockets and now wants to be an electrical engineer (circuit boards etc).

Another is a lorry driver, who also is an I.T specialist. He realised he hated the prospect of having to sit behind a desk 10 hours a day and getting paid £40k, so he became a lorry driver, and now intends to go to Coventry uni to do some course which i failed to catch the name of....

Logical.

Another is a youngish lad a few years older than me, who got discharged from the army due to doing his back in whilst lifting a washing machine.

In fact, all of the above served in the army for a period of time, which i found was amusing. They spend their breaks swapping funny stories about training, drinking, and shouting.

So yes! 2 days a week of hardcore learning. Loooong days too.

Wednesday:

08:30 - 10:15 Study Skills

(Large gap intended as a study period)

12:30 - 14:00 Maths

14:00 - 15:00 Industry Tutorial Whatever that is

15:15 - 17:15 Electrical Science

Thursday:

08:45 - 10:15 Maths

10:30 - 12:00 Study Skills

12:45 - 14:15 English

14:30 - 16:00 Science

16:00 - 17:30 Science


I'm kinda annoyed that my breaks are so short, as it's about a 15 minute walk back into the city centre. This means I'll have to put up with whatever crap food is available locally.


I got my first assignment to do. The question they asked is really ambiguous in relation to the information it's referring to, so I'll have to pester my tutor to elaborate.

Work tomorrow! will be hard work as the Wine Festival is now in full swing. This is a pain as i have to walk the full length of a 70,000 ft² store pulling roll cages that weigh 400kg to fill the 'power aisle' (the main aisle you walk through as you enter the store). And of course, dodging all the customers.

Tags: college, wine, work
Current Location: Leicester, UK, Home
Current Mood: tired