Unkown Debt

Apparently I owe the Pope $30500.

http://holysee.biz/Papal_Indulgince/indulgence.htm

Shopping

I seriously underestimated how much 5 KG of pasta was, along with 3 KG of meat. It would have been easier to just have a cow, and a pasta tree, in the back garden to occasionally take chunks out of.

Annoyances

My laptop has developed the annoying habit of turning itself off when it gets hot. This is particularly annoying because after being turned on for an hour it reaches approximately the same temperature as the sun.

Firefox has also developed the annoying habit of occasionally refusing to load any new pages until it is completely shut down and a new window opened.

My right eye is also very dry this evening, but I do not expect a solution to that.

Hmmm

Have you ever known a person for ages, and really liked them (friend or otherwise) and then met them again after a coupple of years and been really disappointed that the things you liked most about them have not gone, but on the contrary become much more pronounced and made them completely different from your memories and expectations?

I don't like change, and I should not meet up with old friends that I have not seen in 2 years.

There are of course exceptions.

Also more thoroughly testing posting in the future.

Have I Got New For You?

Well, Yes. I do actually.

First off, future posting does not work. I posted something 24 hours in the future, and it still showed up in the RSS feed. Kind of takes the point away.

Also, you should all watch Have I got News for You. I went to see the recording on Thursday and it was hilarious. Although I suspect much will be cut out for legal reasons. Watch out for the Elvis material, for every minute you see there were 20 others. It may be on Saturday or Friday, I am not sure. If you missed it grab a torrent or watch the repeat. I may even be on iPlayer.

Rome

So I went to Rome and it is actually the most amazing place in the world. I plan to buy a holiday home there at some time.

Things that are different in Rome :

The traffic is mental, I was nearly ran over so many times. The green walking man seems to be more of a guide line than a rule, along with lanes, zebra crossings and stop signs.

The Tube / Metro. In London the first rule about the tube is, you do not talk on the tube. The second rule of the tube is, you DO NOT talk on the tube. This does not seem to be the case in Rome, and can you guess what film I watched recently? There are also TVs showing adverts on the Metro, which is just annoying, on the train and the platform. They are really loud, big posters are just much better.

Ate loads of Pasta, Pizza and Ice Cream. I went to this one restaurant type place right on top of the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, a place I had never heard of before but it is Huge and hosts the tomb of the Italian Unknown Soldier. And you could see the whole city, I have pictures at home somewhere. It would take to long to talk about everything that was amazing there, it just all was.

I had my first £120 meal in Rome (between 2), and it was actually the best thing I have ever eaten. I brought lots of presents. My sister a Prada handbag, my Dad a box of cigars and a crate of wine. It then brought a lot of stuff for myself. Coffee, Cheese, Cigars, Wine, Crazy Lemon Liqueur, Chocolate, Suit, Sunglasses etc. etc. I think the funniest thing, which I did not buy, was the pasta in novelty shapes. They had any shape you could want, and I do mean any. (Yes Penis shaped is very much included)

If you have not been you should go. I can imagine it would be an amazing place to take a girlfriend for a holiday.

If you do go, stay in a place called Suite of Rome, I can give you the address. Cheap and excellent service.

Late

I wonder if you could sue Tesco if you died of starvation while waiting, if the food you ordered was late being delivered.

London

I am back in London, poker at the weekend anyone?

Sexy Prime

So, apparently prime numbers can be sexy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_prime

Also I just got Rickroll'd for the first time while following a link from XKCD trying to find the hard drive techno track.

EDIT:

I followed another link from the forums and got to this. It is so bad it is hilarious.

Home

I am back, did you all miss me?

Problems with Fun

Okay, I have realised what my problem is with not having fun. I am not the most hardworking of students, but I found myself thinking when how to organise such fun

"I have exams soon, how am I going to fit it in before Exams? I shall have to do it next term, but wait. It is my last year then, it is worth a lot of my degree I need to work"

Now this is one of the many reasons I want to do another degree, I feel I have wasted this one by not being enough of a student. Unfortunately I may not do another one, so all you helpful people out there have got to stop me wasting this one.

I find myself too easily just spending a night watching TV because it is too cold or too far to go to go out. This needs to change.

I also need to do some exercise and go to the gym and stop eating so much pizza and ice cream, but I shall think about that more later..... after I get back from eating lots of ice cream and pizza in Rome. When in Rome......

Fun + Rome

I am off to Rome in a few hours, which should be good fun. I enjoyed it the last time I went years ago and am very much looking forward to it now.

My intention to spend the week dressed in a Toga was overruled by the people I am going with, I was only trying to be authentic. Unfortunately I was not trusted when I tried to convince them that everyone else would be wearing them. I also intend to use the phrase "When in Rome....." as often as humanly possible while there.


Also I need to have more fun in London. I just received an email from a friend slightly further north, at a quite a good University (To stop the argument the worse uni you go to the more fun you have) and from the email there are all sorts of things happening on what I must assume is a weekly basis that I do not remember being part of in London. There is always the possibility I was too drunk, but I doubt I have ever been drunk enough to forget what has been described.

So when we all get back we need to arrange some women, some cider and some cards. To start with anyway.

South Park and Doctor Who

I still maintain the South Park is the only TV show to get better the longer it goes on. To begin with it was just 4 kids messing around with Kenny dying every now and again. Then around seasons 5 to 8 there were eppisodes such as Scott Tenorrman must die, A Ladder to Heaven and The Return of the Fellowship of the ring to the Two Towers. The last one being about getting some LOTR porn back from butters and some 'big kids'.

Then who could predict it could get even better?

Season 10 onwards has rewarded us with greats such as The WoW episode, the British trying to recapture the US, Imaginationland, Cartman getting Aids and giving it to Kyle and so on.

Then the three most recent episodes, which I watched last night, were three of the best so far. The first was a parody of the Holocaust using cats, and Cartman ironically trying to save them by hiding them in his attic (and actually at one point telling one of them to write a diary). The next was about Canada going on strike, and in turn reunited us all with forgotten internet fads. Who can remember this guy?




Then the most recent episode was about Mr / Mrs Garrison. For those not familiar with South Park, G started off a straight guy, then decided he was gay (hence introducing Mr Slave who at one point put a live hamster in his ass), then got a sex change to be a straight woman (at one point creating an atheistic future with Richard Dawkins), then became a lesbian (in a 300 parody) and now has just got a sex change back to a man again by growing a new penis on the back of a mouse.

Seriously the two guys who write all this stuff are just geniuses.


Now Dr. Who. Predictably again it was rubbish, there are two or three decent episodes a season and this was not one of them and I don't expect the next one to be either. I am personally looking forward to Silence in the Library in a few weeks. There are no details about it yet, but being written by the same guy as Blink it should be awesome.

Also I thought Caecilius died in Pompeii. Or I could just be remembering my year 9 latin incorrectly. I did spend most of the 45 mins trying to work out how they were going to save Quintus (who I remember surviving).

It is incredibly interesting how much everyone knows about this one family. Especially considering how long ago it was. I suspect I know more about Quintus and Caecilius than anyone else from that time, mythical or not. I also distinctly remember him being a banker or a merchant, not a marble craftsman.

TV

In case some of you were not aware, and i was not until a minute ago and looked it up out of curiosity, there are now new episodes of South Park, Scrubs, NCIS, and CSI with House and Shark starting at the end of the month.

Unfortunately I read somewhere a while back that Heroes will not be back until the end of the year, someone please tell me that I am wrong.

Inconsistency

Why do things change?

There was a time that on a Friday night I would automatically know that I would be out later. I cannot remember one in the last 3 years or so that I have been at home and have not been. The group is beginning to break apart. One person has decided to stay in Scotland for the holidays and another came back only for a week. So I am now wondering if this is the point where the life before London finishes disappearing.

I am also about to move house again, for the 5th time in less 18 months. Yet more change.

But then again, maybe it is a good thing. I always remember things before being better than things now, but were they? I only remember the good things of the past, yet I remember the good and the bad things of the present. Perhaps it is just inevitable that the small group of close friends I had then will be replaced by the small group I have now. And then they in turn are replaced when I leave Imperial? Moving house and changing groups of friends often seems like a good way not to get attached to anything for too long, which I suppose is a sensible strategy even if it is mostly unintentional.



I also discovered today my old chat logs for MSN, I had a program to record all the conversations I had for future reference. I spent a large amount of time today reading a lot of old conversations, and mostly thinking what an idiot I was. I will give no examples because the conversations I read were quite personal, but I am sure all of you have heard me say something incredibly stupid that if I were to remember it I would regret saying it. The only difference between then and now is that I was sober then. So perhaps I am learning.

Which makes me wonder if there will ever be a point in my life where I will look back to 6 months or a year previously and not think 'Jesus Christ I was retarded then.' I am already starting to do this with my first year in London.



Tech part - I have no idea what the difference between Atom and RSS is, I simply ticked the box telling google to put a link for a feed on the page. However I was warned before doing so that it is still a beta feature of the site, so may break.



Also you should watch this:

It is part of a Newsnight I watched a while ago. The first part was about 'Brain Gym' which is being taught in schools, which tells us that if you press parts of your body it makes blood flow to different parts of the brain, allowing us to learn different things better.






Now I have never liked biology and avoided it as much as possible after GCSE, I even dropped chemistry post AS, after learning there was a biology module. But even I know that it is bollocks.

Unfortunately this does not come close to the stupidity in Andy's post about the universe fitting into a small space so there is no mass only energy, and using that and some random string theory in your ears thrown in along with Stephen Hawking being on a mission from God it is possible to revert people back into previous energy states, hence curing disease with water while presumably charging lots of money.

After watching you really need to wash yourself with some Feynman.

Sleep Deprevation

Why?

I still have no idea why I constantly deprive myself of sleep. Even in the holidays when I can sleep when ever I want, I still feel the need to stay up very late and then sleep until mid-day. Why not go to bed at a reasonable time and then wake up at a reasonable time????? I am doing nothing now that requires being awake at 02:00, in fact I am slightly procrastinating to avoid going to bed.


This is also testing the 'future post' thing Google have added in. It should be posted 8 mins after typing. Also note the RSS box now on the right, if it does not work blame Google.

Interesting + Deja Vu

So, first off. Something that I had not planned to write about. I just got a huge Deja Vu while typing in the Tags for this post. I am now going to look it up in Wikipedia, to try and find out what it is. I get them all the time, and while a kid always wondered if I was dreaming the future and just could not really remember them. I then spent ages trying to remember all my dreams and write them down and every few days cross checking to see if any of them had happened.

Music, you should all listen to this:



It is not in English, but is hypnotic and actually quite cool. Stolen from http://noiseandruckus.tumblr.com/

Also, something interesting I have learnt today. Elephants are actually afraid of mice. I always assumed it only happened in cartoons, but it was tested on Mythbusters and apparently they actually are.

First Post

So, I feel an introduction and explanations should probably come first.

I am Josh, but if you did not know that email me. Seriously, I want to know if anyone reads this that I do not already know.


So, why start a blog?


Well I often think of amazing and interesting things to tell people and then forget to tell anyone, or only tell some people and then assume everyone knows. So now I can simply write things here and then, assuming everyone I know or will ever meet reads this, I have no need to continually tell different people the same thing. Which will in turn further reduce my need to socially interact with others, which is always a good thing.

So when I decided I wanted a blog, the first thing I did was go to blog.com which turned out to be rubbish. So then predictably I turned to google, which supplies everything else useful and easy to use on t'internet. If I continue with this for a while I may learn some code and create something decent, but don't expect that to happen any time soon.

I have an imaginary list of things to talk about to start off with that I will probably forget about by tomorrow. I will also throw a small, slightly metaphorical, party if this lasts more than 10 posts.

You may also notice the ads in the top right. They are there because when setting this up, I saw a box to tick asking me if I wanted to make money from adsense. You should click on them every now and again. All of your own free will, I am sure they will all be interesting.