It’s funny how two radically different times between first and second, in the context of races, can both be so newsworthy. Between Michael Phelps getting his seventh gold of the games by a mere 100th of a second, and Usain Bolt absolutely destroying the competition in the 100m sprint by 0.2s (without even trying, and with his shoelaces undone), these games have certainly been one of extremes.

I finally saw The Dark Knight yesterday at the IMAX. Seeing a film that I wanted to see so long after it comes out – especially one so hyped – is foreign territory to me. However, a bunch of us had agreed to see it at the IMAX, so I thought I’d make the effort to see it for the first time there, dutifully avoiding all spoilers. It says a lot that coming out, after all the hype, I was not even remotely disappointed. My one reservation was who they killed (carefully avoiding spoilers for the three people who haven’t seen it yet, mostly the bad guy that copped it), but I can easily forgive them that slight transgression for what was otherwise a masterclass in cinematic and dramatic entertainment.

Doubling up with The Dark Knight in London, I also went to see Avenue Q in the early evening. I’ve had the soundtrack for a couple of years, which I enjoy a great deal, so it was quite exciting to get to go see it live. It too lived up to my expectations, and was a relief. I had somewhat put it on a pedestal over time, but I thoroughly enjoyed the two hour show, and felt afterwards that it had been well worth my money.

I had my last day in the lab today. I’ve enjoyed my summer job there, but I am very much looking forward to going home – I’ve basically had two terms rolled into one, so I rather feel like I’ve earned a break. I’m headed home tomorrow, and TPJ is having another tarpaulin party which I’m being dropped off at on the way – the perfect start.

Audiophiles have long been known as having a subset of idiots, who will spend ludicrous amounts of money on anything claimed to improve the sound they think they hear. A CD stabilizer takes the biscuit though. My favourite part of the description:

To see if the stabilizer is compatible with your transport, try loading 2 disks at the same time. If it works, the mat is compatible.

Presumably, what they’ve left out is ‘if it doesn’t work, you’ve broken your CD player’.

Lastly, as a bowling team name, I came up with ‘No split, Sherlock’ this evening. Heh heh.

It’s been a mixed week. Work has been frustrating, in that nothing that I’ve built or made works quite how I want it to, so I’m layering bodge job upon compromise upon approximation. If I have got anything remotely resembling science out at the end of next week, it’s going to be a small miracle.

To keep my mind off of this fact, however, I’ve been enjoying the Cambridge Busking Festival this week. I’ve spent my lunchtimes on the streets of Cambridge, enjoying a variety of acts. The most notable, however, was Kenneth Lightfoot. He’s a street magician with charisma in spades, and it says a lot that I caught him multiple times. He had an excellent ambitious card routine, complete with bending and initialing of multiple cards. The most amazing effect, however, was one that I’d not seen before.

He’d give a spectator a piece of paper, on which he was to write a two digit number, and then put it in an envelope in his pocket. He’d do a couple of illusions in the interim (he did this quite often; start things and then return to them later – an excellent way, I note, to keep a crowd) before returning to the spectator. He’d ‘read his mind’, and draw up a four by four grid, inside which he put numbers, seemingly at random.

One of the times I saw him, the number was in the grid, and he got a small child to wave their hand over the grid, and stop where they liked – stopping, of course, on the chosen number. The other time, the number was not in the grid, so he omitted this. In both cases, the grid, of course, was a magic square for the chosen number – and spectacularly so. Diagonals, rows, columns, corners, center four, opposite pairs, the works.

I’ve worked out part of the trick (at least, how I’d do it if I were instructed to come up with the effect), but obtaining the spectator’s number in the first place eludes me. My mother can read what you’re writing just by watching the top of your pen with surprising accuracy. It feels like cheating, but that’s the best that I’ve come up with so far.

I’ve also had the distressing news that Nizlopi, who I love and see live whenever the opportunity remotely presents itself, will not be touring in 2009 at all. I also cannot make it to any of the farewell tour this autumn (all the gigs are during term time, none of them are in Cambridge, and the London date is a Wednesday). I’m going to have gone almost two year without seeing them live (best case scenario) by the time I next see them. At least I got a signed copy of Extraordinary last time I saw them.

I tragically broke my Sony DSC-P200 camera just before May Week this year (meaning that I only have limited May Week photos – but they are great). Having suffered drops, hits, crushes and everything I’d been able to throw at it (or throw it at), it finally bit the bullet when it fell out of my pocket onto the ground.

And then fell over the landing onto the floor below.

I can’t really begrudge it for calling it a day at that point, but it was so close to still working that it was a bit tragic. It still turned on, the lens still extends, but when you tried to take a photo, the LCD went black forever. Fortunately, I had accidental damage on my insurance, so I was able to get a nice new shiny camera.

I managed to talk the insurance company into giving me a better camera than they were going to (the old camera was insured for what we bought it at, and they were offering a camera that was barely half that. It didn’t even have the (limited) manual exposure options that my old camera had), and Friday a shiny new DSC-W300 showed up. My main concern is that it has too many megapixels. I’m never going to use a 13.6 megapixel photo for anything; I thought that the 7.1 megapixels the P200 provided was too much when I first got it, and in the last three years it proved itself to be more than enough. With so many megapixels though, on a compact camera’s sensor, I’m going to end up with more noise than before. I don’t know whether reducing the resolution that I shoot at helps, but I guess I’ll give it a try.

The second of the new pages is now up and running, which shows the Bruce Dickinson screenames that my friends and I have had over the last few years. There are a lot missing, and I’m going to be working on tracking down some of the missing ones, but I’m not holding my breath. All future ones should be captured, however, which is something at least.

I played badminton in the heat this afternoon, got incredibly sweaty, and just as we were walking back a massive thunderstorm started. It was immense fun.

I went to a talk by Cory Doctorow last night on the Information Economy, and it was incredibly interesting. He made a number of points that, while not terribly complex, I’d not heard presented in such a succinct manner before. For example, he noted that while the internet is very good at being a large copying machine, it’s actually even better at reducing overhead and costs for getting people together to do superhuman (in the literal sense) stuff. Indeed, Boing Boing has recently had to hire someone to do the stuff that needs co-ordinating, as they’re so bad at it, simply because they’re so streamlined at stuff that doesn’t need co-ordinating.

He also used the phrase “Paris Hilton’s genitals have joined the undead and will roam the Earth forever” – or in less exciting terms (if indeed exciting is the right term to use when discussing anything related to Paris Hilton’s genitals. I have my doubts.), once the internet knows something, it doesn’t forget it if it is sufficiently interesting. There’s going to be a video of the talk going up, allegedly, and I may well watch it again should it appear as promised.

I ran across one of the new coins for the first time today; a penny. I’m going to keep hold of it until I get one of each, so I can make the coat of arms. It’s very impressive the amount of detail they have on them – the pictures don’t really do it justice. I do wonder how attractive they’ll be once this detail has worn off after a few years, though – but having said that, it’s not really something we concern ourselves with regarding the current coinage.

I’ve run across quines before (programs that print their source code), but I ran across polyglots for the first time the other day. These are programs that compile to do the same thing in multiple languages. This lead me to their inevitable unholy spawn: polyglot quines. Or quine polyglots, if you prefer. The mind boggles at how you would even go about beginning to come up with such a program.

One of the new pages is present in its prototypical stages – Einstein Says, in the sidebar. There’s a description of what it is there, and thanks to Flickr and the phpFlickr library, it’s going to be dead easy to keep updated.

Lastly, I learned something today in the lab. There are two types of BNC connectors – short ones, and long ones. Confusing the two, especially having finished making your cables, is likely to cause intense frustration.

I’m getting things across to Wordpress okay. I’ve still got the auctions to move across (not sure how to do that cleanly – I might just leave them in their own table of the database), and I’ve got a couple of ideas for new pages that I’ve had for a while. By my estimation, one will be liked by six specific people, and the other might be liked by a few more. I’ve got to have something to tinker with, though.

Today at work, I built two things out of LEGO, and did a brief experiment into the flammability of Sellotape. Working in a lab is fun.

I’m moving my site from an engine of my own (poor) design to WordPress. I’m keeping the same theme and everything though, but it might take a while for me to port everything across. A mostly-working copy of the old site is at http://area.hostingposts.com/oldsite/ on the slim chance that anyone cares.

So nearly six months since an entry…. that’s pretty poor in anyone’s book. The truth is, I was constructing a gigantic, International Camp based post, but then due to the sheer gargantuan nature of the entry, I never finished it and University snuck up on me quite comprehensively. However, it’s now the end of term, I’m back home, and I’ve got time to kill, so this seems like an apt time to strive to put right what once went wrong, hoping each time that my next post will be the post home… or something to that effect…

I raved about how sensationally fantastic International Camp was last year. Going this year, it didn’t cross my mind that last year could be beaten – but it most comprehensively was. This was almost single handedly down to the expedition. Last year, I’ll admit, that while I got to know a lot of people through the computer room as they got bored waiting for websites to load, much of my village remained a stranger to me. This year, the expedition changed that. By taking each village to an individual location, people couldn’t go talk to their friends in other villages, which forced them to get to know people within their village. This made a huge amount of difference to the atmosphere within each one right from the start.

The workers arrived from 2 on Sunday. After sorting out tents, we had a big meeting in the main hall to tell us all about international camp, what we should expect and what was expected of us. The earliest internationals started arriving shortly thereafter, and quickly we had the independent Polish contingent – left by their dads who Ben quickly reasoned were here either for an affair or a fishing trip – as well as the Dutch group with us. We were graced by Ewein’s presence in the village, who had a broken leg and thus garnered a real bed, with a mattress, and everything. He and his two friends were a bit of a handful, but were (mostly) good natured, if reluctant to do what they were told.

The next day was devoted to international arrivals – Israelis, the French, Spanish, the Koreans and Germans all pitched up, raring to go. Unfortunately the Estonians weren’t to arrive until the following day. Nevertheless, camp was filling up nicely and was more than ready for the Welcome Disco in the evening. Pav at Cambridge is the cheesiest event in the universe, but even a year of preparation left me mildly stunned at how fast the disco descended into the core of quintessential cheese – we’re talking the Macarena and 5678 in quick succession. I didn’t think that anyone had the gall to come up with such a playlist, but Ginge Dave (actual trade name) proved me wrong. Gloriously, deliriously wrong. Everyone enjoyed themselves and got to know each other a little better, as was the aim. After looking after someone who was erring towards worse-for-wear, I went to bed, looking forward to the rest of camp.

Teambuilding the next day was both short of Estonians and enthusiasm from most people. Fruit salad was grudgingly partaken in and we then played the dueling game whose name escapes me. Fruit salad is where everyone sits on a chair in a circle around one person, who says something – such as ‘I have a sister’. Everyone who that applies to has to run to another chair. Whoever doesn’t make it get to a chair makes the next statement – the idea being that you get to know each other better. Of course, it degenerates into ‘Everyone wearing jeans’ which is less interesting, and gets boring quite quickly. One game that was surprisingly enjoyable was ‘Ha-Ha’, where you lie on the next person’s belly, and then the group has to pass a chain of “Ha’s” without anyone actually laughing. It’s more difficult than it sounds, and very entertaining.

The afternoon consisted of ‘It’s a knockout’ which was based around a medley of inflatable and water-based activities. I didn’t get to do the one I wanted to do the most – the gladiators – but everyone going around with a small group of people from the village helped everyone get to know each other far better than the teambuilding in the morning. It was here that the inter-village rivalries kicked off, with the Barmy Army quickly becoming most people’s least favourite village – if only because of jealously directed towards their chant (which, I have to admit, was the best – though quickly became overused).

The evening consisted of village parties – again, to help bond the villages together. Ours was a pajama pudding party (I seem, ironically, to go to more pudding parties than most) which was excellent fun, with Twister and limbo sticks both putting in appearances. My personal best for the evening was handcuffing Ted and Ness together while they were playing Twister but, alas, the handcuffs were only made of plastic and so readily succumbed to their tugging. It’s the thought that counts! The evening also gave rise to the immortal line of ‘but that’s nine-tenths of the fun’, courtesy of TPJ and the sex-education talk.

One thing that struck me about camp this year was the amount of chess being played (certainly in our village – the Firefighters had a taste for Poker) and I rediscovered how much I enjoyed playing it. I recall one particularly excellent game with Patrick towards the end of camp, which we ended up calling a draw with a rook, three pawns and a king on the board each, in almost identical positions. Katya, one of the Polish girls, turned out to be awesome at chess. I played her several times, and never really came close to troubling her. She even stepped into a game that I was playing against Deepak when he had to leave; I was winning quite convincingly, I thought, and she just inexorably turned the situation around. She would have been a joy to watch, had I not been on the receiving end so consistently!

The following day we left for the expedition – raft building and kart racing were waiting for us and I think they were enjoyed – to some extent, at least – by everyone. TPJ and I made sure to enjoy ourselves a lot as, with no computer room, we were without the vast majority of our responsibilities. Arguably more enjoyable than the activities were the spontaneous ball games that we played, which gave the Polish girls another chance to show off their borderline-inhuman reactions. I brought out the glow-poi and had a toi (sorry) with those for a while. I also taught Elly some Poi on the expedition, who was just plain inhumanly good at it. She got a three beat weave sorted in mere minutes, which was alarmingly quick.

I make it sound like the Y chromosome was given a thorough kicking, but there was that most masculine of activities on offer: burning stuff. The campfire in the evening provided a focal point for the village at night, and it was fueled with wood collected during the day by villagers, which provided a nice outlet for the French boys, who appeared to have limitless reserves of energy. Of course, perhaps the biggest boost to the Y chromosome total was Deepak as village leader. He did a fantastic job of the daunting task that was being responsible for everyone and came out of it the other side unscathed. Jo did a great job too as village co-leader, but her contribution doesn’t add to the Y-chromosome score!

After the expedition, the rest of camp was just as much fun. We had a whole bunch of activities laid on for us as would be expected, ranging from the serious (like Rounders and the Swimming Gala) to the not so serious (like Silly Sports) and then, of course, the parties. Of particular note was the Masquerade Ball – tuxedoes all around, which greatly added to the occasion. My bow-tie spent the night in the rain, unfortunately, and I managed to dent my camera by dropping it onto a brick floor, but neither of these unfortunate events managed to dull my enjoyment of the event even slightly.

This year I was there for the end of camp (last year I was on my way to V – alas, no tickets were won this year. I blame Glastonbury), and it was surprisingly sad saying goodbye to everyone. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, people seem to be doing a reasonably good job of keeping in touch (both my sister and I are speaking to people, so I assume most others are too, based on my sample space of two). I’m looking forward to Camp next year, but whether I can do it depends really on the dates and what I’m doing over the summer. Alana’s successfully applied for Planning Committee, but I know that Ted hasn’t got on, which is a shame.

When camp finished, I still had a huge expanse of time until I needed to head back to Cambridge but, alas, about half of it was filled with revising work that I would need in the year to come. Materials was joyfully discarded with great gusto and it was nice to be able to not worry about Chemistry any more, even though I quite enjoyed it. Maths and Double Physics was my poison of choice, resulting in the revision of IA Maths and Physics. I was excessively glad that I did this, as it was almost alarming how much I had forgotten. It came back relatively quickly, but it was a hairy week or so at the start of the process where I was a little bit concerned.

Indeed, the case could be made that I should have started earlier. Returning to Cambridge we, the physicists, were hit with more work than ever before. We dealt with this in a novel manner. Bequeathing the bar as a work area to the new freshers, we moved into the infinitely more comfortable reading room and never looked back. It even has a blackboard in it which, once Chris bought chalk, was usually covered with some fairly gnarly physics. The room wasn’t just used for physics – both Scrabble and Chess made regular showings throughout term and the term as a whole further re-enforced my rediscovery of enjoying chess that I made at camp. We looked so much at home in the room – and the physics on the board was so scary to the layman, perhaps – that on many occasions people opened the door, took a couple of steps in, looked around, and left again. I do hope that we keep up inhabiting the room next term, as it quite awesome having a comfortable place where everyone can go to work and ask questions about any troubles that they’re having with work set.

Cambridge was, as always, brilliant. In spite of all the work (don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it; it would just be nice to have a few less questions every week), I managed to enjoy myself immensely. I got to a Fire Troupe burn, which is now being enthusiastically organized through weekly-ish emails from Aran, an Engineering fresher at Churchill. He ran the Canterbury Fire Troupe before he came to University, and things seem to be ticking over more steadily than last year. Towards the end of term I also started teaching Sarah poi; like Elly, she’s suspiciously good at it. She got a three beat weave sorted within half an hour, and then did a butterfly first time, much to my amazement. I expect great things in the future! There was a small sprinkling of Random Sports in there too, when it wasn’t rainy or the aforementioned work was creeping up uncomfortably close. The last week of term was a bit of a rush (thanks, Physics Lab Report and Computing Practicals), but made the eventual release all the sweeter. I achieved a sorely needed level of decadence the day after I handed in the last piece of work by seeing The Nightmare Before Christmas for the first time (which was being shown just once at the Arts Picturehouse), and Casino Royale for the second time, the bookends to an afternoon/evening that also involved the Rainbow Cafe and just general pottering in town (Borders, we salute you) with Sarah.

I stayed in Cambridge until the Thursday after term ended so that I could attend a “Demonstrators’ Training Session” for the IoP outreach event that I was to be helping at on the Sunday. I could have stayed in Cambridge until the Sunday, but I fancied a few extra days at home. I was a little nervous about what the talk would consist of; I thought it was going to be a terribly formal talk about safety, which end of the scissors we should use, that sort of thing. I turned out to be very wrong. The entire session consisted of generally having quite a good time making pan-pipes out of card, as well as straw trumpets, which are the singularly most annoying instrument ever crafted by the hands of man. We also put marshmallows in a vacuum dessicator with predictable yet not any less entertaining results. I managed to put a name to a face in Anne, who I’d seen during the second half of my Thursday pacticals but never spoken to. She really enjoyed the whole kids aspect on the Sunday, and had helped the day before at a similar event at the Geology department (which sounded like Alana would have loved it – making jewellery) for that very reason. Lisa Jardine-Wright was demonstrating at the event, which I am happy to say she did much better than lecturing (though I shouldn’t be too harsh – she was thrown in to lecture the course at short notice). She was making comets with Soy Sauce using liquid nitrogen, which was actually quite interesting; the resulting balls of dirty ice did rather look like comets (or certainly, how I’ve pictured them) too.

I took a week off doing no work, and then started into the grind. I have 53 questions (including Computing Practicals) to do and, as of this writing, I have 26 done. I’m not keeping a pie chart of death at home (partially because it would sully the pie chart of death at college, which keeps track of the supervision work we have to do, and partially because at under 7 degrees a question, it would just depress me), but just crossing questions off of a big list, which is satisfying enough to keep me going. Half way through the questions, and not even half way through the holiday (where I’m allowed to work, so the first week doesn’t count) is where I want to be for Christmas (though I might try a Computing Practical or two on Christmas Eve, so I could be over half way…).

The holidays are going well; work is progressing and parties are being attended (much love for the Durin’s Day Party, Ben and Elly). The nerve wracking Evans Challenge match was also attended today (5-5 at full time, 6-6 a.e.t. and 6-7 to us on penalties, after 13 kicks) which was seriously awesome, in spite of my twisted ankle which I picked up through entirely my own fault 30 minutes in (I didn’t think it was too bad – I was able to keep playing after hobbling around for five minutes or so – but it’s getting sorer this evening). I fully intend to be massively relaxed by the time I get back to Cambridge, but I have this nagging feeling that the one subject that hasn’t set work will do via the wonder of e-mail and I’ll end up finishing it the day before my first supervision next term. It’s the Cambridge way!

If you’ve made it this far, then I salute you. Have a very Merry Christmas if I have not wished you so so far, and a Happy New Year!

It’s commonly known that time flies when you’re having fun. Less well known is the apparent fact that time also flies when you’re working yourself into the ground; the term just gone was, of course, exam term. I returned to college a week earlier than most to get in some revision in before term kicked off proper. The mathematics students didn’t have any (compulsory) lectures this term but pretty much everyone else had four weeks of lectures where they were generally expected to squeeze in at least some revision in addition to getting told lots of new things by lecturers. I managed to get a little independent revision done during those four weeks, but not a great deal – I convinced myself that the past paper questions that I was doing for supervisions counted as revision so I didn’t feel too guilty. In all honesty, they did – but I still felt like I should have been doing more at the time.

When lectures finished, we got two weeks and two days before our exams started. In a way, my choices benefited my exam timetable – I got this large gap; those taking Cells had under two weeks before their exams started. Physics, however, is timetabled for Saturday afternoons each year, which was slightly demoralizing to discover, and Monday contained the joys of both Maths and Chemistry. Overall, I think the exams went okay – Materials wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been; Physics was great – but it’s being down-marked because everyone did too well. Maths 1 was universally considered to be god-awful, and Chemistry was a good paper, but I’m pretty sure that I didn’t do myself justice on it. Maths 2 – my last exam – was better than Maths 1, but still not great.

Of course, after all the work this term – indeed, through the whole year – the eventual release was all the sweeter. May Week was more than welcome by the time that it arrived, and was seriously awesome. With Maths 2 going so much better than Maths 1 – and with exams being over – I felt like I was on a roll, so I went to the Virtua Tennis machine that I’ve basically paid for myself this term, intending to put another £1 in – but there was a free credit. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I took it – and ended up placing on the high-score board for the first time ever. Embarrassingly, it did manage to add to my day even after finishing exams. I then poied a bit with Martin and Sam before making a flying visit to the Compsci barbecue at Churchill. There was then a Physics Strawberry Tea, which was very nice – and where I spoke to a Nobel Prize winner for the first time – Antony Hewish. He was very interesting to speak to, actually, though Chris had much more in common with him having done nearly the same gap year as him. A couple of hours of football and then carefully avoiding drunk people furiously spinning poi at each other rounded off a most excellent day (assuming that only time after noon is considered).

I’m not really sure what happened on Thursday. There was probably ReBoot involved. Whatever happened, I probably enjoyed it and it was very relaxing, which was much required. Friday, however, was tragedy after tragedy. The first tragedy was the removal of the Virtua Tennis machine from the games room. I liked this machine even more than the Virtua Striker machine – which Will and I forged a strong relationship with – and as mentioned, had only got on the high score table a couple of days before in what was a glorious run. To my knowledge, there is no replacement yet, but the ideal situation would be a Soul Calibur machine or a Street Fighter machine. Something better replace it – I’m not a fan of the Crazy Taxi arcade machine (I’ve learnt my Crazy Taxi trade on the far easier Dreamcast version with a controller – not the harder Arcade version with a wheel and pedals) or Point Blank. I could learn to love Time Crisis II, I think, but light-gun games have never grabbed me as much as others have. The second tragedy of the day was the last Pav – only a tragedy of course, because it now means that I have to go without Pav for a whole four months. It was brilliant though; it started late, because it was the Master’s Farewell Dinner, but once it started, it was all the cheesiest best tunes that we’ve come to love Pav for. This was much appreciated after the Pav black-out during the Quiet Period through the whole of term. A room party rounded off the night rather well.

I spent a lot of Saturday moving half of my stuff out of my room – my parents came down, realising that it took us two trips at the start of the year to bring everything down, that it would take us at least two to bring it all back. Essentially, everything work related disappeared, as did anything that wasn’t shorts or T-shirt. This turned out to be a good move as the weather was exceptionally pleasant – not as glorious as the weather had been while I was revising for two weeks, annoyingly, but close enough. There was a brief punt during the day, then a frustrating shopping trip where nowhere had any food that I wanted. Suicide Sunday started much better with strawberries for breakfast (though no Pimms for me) and kept going; Felix, Lauren, Simona, Steve and myself all went punting in the morning and then my tutor (Barry Kingston) in conjunction with two other tutors took us on a riverboat cruise – the arguable highlight being when the Captain started smoking a large cigar, and then crashed into the bank. He was an excessively amiable chap, however, so no-one really cared – and it gave everyone a good laugh. In the evening, I went to the Rainbow Café and then caught up with everyone else to go to some Jazz at a random bar.

The highlight of Monday was the stalking that occurred. Myself, Chris, Phil hair, Ruth and Sarah all went for a walk in the early evening with the broad aim of going to Sainsbury’s. We walked past the Trinity Ball queue looking at all the dressed up people, when Sarah caught sight of a man in a cape and a top hat (though no cane with a silver head). She suggested stalking him – and so we did. He went quite a long way, and doubled back at one point – though that was in a crowded place, so it wasn’t too obvious that we were stalking him and we managed to avoid detection quite magnificently. He ended up walking across a couple of meadows, before he disappeared behind a cordoned off area in a meadow; we think he was heading to an outdoor party next to the river – there was certainly someone who he could have been present, but he had neither his cape or his top hat on (and we couldn’t remember his face, even though he’d double-backed past us), so we weren’t sure. There was then the first Linux install party that I’ve ever been to, which consisted of Gen and Tomski trying to install Linux on Donnie’s computer (who wasn’t even sure that he wanted it), while everyone else sat around, chatted, and drank. No-one even fell out of the window looking at the Trinity Fireworks.

Tuesday was the Churchill Garden Party – free (if you ignore all the money that I’ve put into pool and Virtua Tennis/Strike) and brilliant. Plenty of inflatables to keep the troops entertained – the strap-a-bungee-cord-to-yourself-and-run-away machine is one of the greatest inventions known to mankind. The Churchill female acapella group were excellent and were a nice surprise for me to see – I had missed their performance on Friday (through my own decision). The owner of the bouncy castle chastised us for trying to run up the side (which was much harder than I recalled it being at Chrissy’s Bouncy Parties), which was a bit off, we though. It was hardly as if we were going to hurt ourselves throwing ourselves at the side of a large inflatable. As an added bonus, I also managed to not get dunked in either of the paddling pools present and so stayed dry. The evening called for an early night (well, early for May Week, so midnight-ish) because I was going to get very little sleep the next day.

For, of course, the next day was the Fire Troupe’s performance at Kings’ Affair. After Girton cancelled on us at the end of Lent Term, I was itching for an actual performance. We met at Ed’s room at 2, got our brand spanking new hoodies and proceeded to Kings with lots of equipment, looking like a band of thugs dressed in black from head to toe. We set up everything, and were then told that we had to move because we were too close to where the audience would be. We were then informed that we would be behind a fence for the safety of the audience – frankly, if they’re stupid enough to get too close to spinning flames, then it’s their own fault. Still, it was only a half-height fence at the front, so their view wasn’t too impeded. Our performances were, frankly, glorious. Though I might be biased, I would say that we were the best thing there. To be honest, if I had paid £50 or so for a ticket, I would have been quite disappointed. After another performance at 3AM, we started packing up, and we were done by 5. Carrying everything back to Ed’s room was a bit of a chore, and by the time I had walked back to Churchill it had gone 6 in the morning. I managed to stagger into bed at 6:30, after a shower, and was up ready to face the day at 11. This, it has to be said, was a lie. I was in bed having another kip by 2 in the afternoon. The evening was originally anticipated to be spent with a pub quiz, but upon arrival it was discovered to be off. The visit was not an entire waste, however – they had a Virtua Tennis 2 machine! I didn’t win at it, which was a shame – though this was perhaps because I failed to read the instructions. You’d have thought that I’d have learnt by now. But no. Still, the evening was spent discussing subjects of varying savouriness.

College were less than helpful in how they arranged the end of term – the last day that we could stay up without permission was the Friday, and so I complied with their obvious eagerness to get rid of me. My parents arrived at four – after most other people – Georgina, Dan, Kat, Chris, to name but a few – had departed so I had a pretty lonely few hours. My parents arrived soon enough and we didn’t have too much packing left to do – things like the rug and so on I couldn’t really have done earlier, as I didn’t have the necessary bags. It was quite hot work carrying everything out to the car, but we managed it in the end. We rounded off the year at Cambridge by going up the Muller Centre tower – and it was perfect weather for doing so. I took a series of photos and I have constructed a panorama from them – which came out surprisingly well. It’s big though (over 9 meg) so be prepared to wait a little while! Also note that the watermarks are due to me using an unregistered version of the appropriate program.

Results were under a week away, so I enjoyed my ignorance. Due out on the first Thursday that I was back at home, I spent quite a lot of the day pushing ‘refresh’ – Natural Sciences were released late on in the day. Still, I was greeted at around 5 by a ‘Class I’ in my results box, which needless to say made me rather happy. My breakdown which arrived a few days later merely added to this. Curiously, I have two slightly different breakdowns – one from the Tutorial Administrator, and one from my Director of Studies; the latter having slightly better marks. The accompanying letter says that these are scaled marks, which could be the difference – but the Physics mark stayed the same, and Dave was of the opinion that they were going to scale Physics down as it was too easy. Going with the slightly better results (of course), I got a first in each subject, with my worst being Materials and my best being Physics – which is exactly what I wanted.

Two weeks of the holiday have breezed past – but have been much fun. Boating (twice), bowling, gaming, beaching and pokerage have all been had and I fully intend to keep doing so. There are photos of many of the events described above, but my Flickr account has expired. I’m having difficulty convincing myself that I should renew it out of principle – I didn’t pay for it originally, so I’m going to try and find a method that doesn’t require me to pay directly – last time, of course, I won it. I’ll see if I can do something similar this time! Lastly, everyone go read Xkcd. It may have just become my favourite webcomic. It is probably not a coincidence that the guy that writes it is a Physics graduate. So sue me.

So Florence and I went to see Nizlopi yesterday at Cargo in London. They were fantastic. We got there, it transpired, far too early; the relevant emails claimed that we’d be done by three, and should arrive at 1:30 and no later. We got there at one, and the show didn’t even start until three. Nonetheless, we had a sit in the – surprisingly – pleasant bar until we were told that we could go in.

We had perched ourselves right next to the door in the bar, so we got in almost first, and stood front-center. There was a row of photographers in front of us to begin with but they disappeared after a couple of songs, leaving us with only two people in front of us – Nizlopi. And boy, were they good. I’ve been a fan of the JCB song since I first heard it, and the rest of their album is excellent. But they didn’t limit themselves; they got someone in the audience on stage to sing whatever they wanted and get the crowd to parrot it back to them. They even played an absolutely beautiful (musically – surprisingly rude, lyrically) song called ‘Extraordinary’ in the crowd (which was brilliantly small) at the end, which is coming out as an EP in the summer, apparantly.

They went off at the end, and I ended up with their set-list that they had on stage. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it signed – apparantly they hung around afterwards to sign things, but Flo and I had a train to catch. I took some photos, which are up, as always, at Flickr. Some of them came out shockingly well. Eventually, (some) of the session is going to be up at the tiscali web site, so I’m going to be keeping an eye on that.