Well. It’s been an absolute AGE since I last posted. Ice has formed over the world and re-melted – that’s how long it’s been. And yet I find myself strangely devoid of anything to actually write about. I shall try, however.

So, I moved in with Danni not long after my previous post. I am still yet to actually go to my parents’ to pick up some of my belongings, but I have enough here to at least live. Life around the flat since then has been…interesting.

Money is much better than it was. I left Hull panicking about what would be going on with housing and whether I would be owing. It ends up that the letting agent hooked onto my notice that I would be unable to move in and found someone else to take the room I was meant to be in. Panic over there then.

However, I left Uni. I shall be going back to Uni next year, although most likely at Northumbria instead of Hull. Obviously, I’ll be doing the same subject, but the course itself is somewhat different. The process of leaving Uni was rather quick. It took 2 letters (One to Hull Uni and one to Student Finance England) to inform them that I had left the course. I got a letter back from the Uni and all was good from them. I even passed the year, despite panicking that I wouldn’t!

My sleeping patterns have also been getting gradually worse. It’s currently (as of time of writing) 3:30am. I’ve not been to bed yet. Ah well

And on a different note – Danni and I both changed guilds in World of Warcraft. We have been doing heroics and the odd raid together along with the new guild, and on that front all is well. I am glad that a good few members of Broadly Offensive are still on good terms with the pair of us. Unfortunately I was getting too impatient of waiting for people to get geared up for raids after hitting 80 and looked for somewhere I could go to do said raids.

Anyway, I think that’s all for now – perhaps more when I can think a bit more?

I am currently at Danni’s. I got here just over a week ago now and have been enjoying my time here very much. That is not the reason for this post, however. The reason for this post is to say that we have decided that we are going to be getting married at some point in the future. We have no idea exactly when yet, but it’ll not be before I can move to be with her. Rings? Erm, not got them yet. We’re still looking for ones we really like

Stolen from Danni

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Grandfather on dad’s side.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Grandad’s (on mother’s side) funeral.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
No, it’s terrible.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE LUNCH MEAT?
Ham

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
No

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
Depends, I suppose

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
I can be sarcastic sometimes, I struggle with it sometimes though

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
No, too petrified of heights…

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE CEREAL?
Don’t really have one

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Nope, and they’ve paid the price.

12. FAVOURITE SPORT TO PARTICIPATE IN?
Cricket

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE ICE CREAM?
Chocolate…om nom nom

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
The fact they’re most likely taller than I am.

15. RED OR PINK?
Don’t make me choose! Oh, okay, red.

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
LEAST favourite? Erm, my inability to form sentences on some days.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
Danni.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
That’d be unrealistic.

19. WHAT COLOUR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Pass, bit of a weird question that.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Yes – Owner of a Lonely Heart

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOUR WOULD YOU BE?
Purple

23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Freshly cut grass, Vanilla.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My mam

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
I like the person I stole it off, yes

26. FAVOURITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
Formula 1, Cricket.

27. HAIR COLOUR?
Very very dark brown; pretty much black

28. EYE COLOUR?
Brown.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No.

30. FAVOURITE FOOD?
So difficult to answer, I don’t really have a favourite.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Happy endings.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Star Trek

33. WHAT COLOUR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Blue

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Winter

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Hugs

36. FAVOURITE DESSERT?
Sticky toffee pud.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
No idea, likely nobody

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Everyone?

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
I’m not, really

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
My mouse.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
I didn’t watch TV last night.

42. FAVOURITE SOUND(S)
Difficult that, sound is something I don’t tend to appreciate as a thing.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
The Beatles.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
London.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
Not really, no. I’m just a guy!

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
York District Hospital, York

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
There likely won’t be any answers

In a week I am going back to the parents’. Well, in 6 days now. I have train tickets booked and everything, so there’s no real changing the date. It does, however, leave me in an interesting situation. I have no idea where I’m going to put all my stuff. None whatsoever. I’ve looked at storage places – they’re all too expensive. I can’t realistically hire a van; noone is available to drive it to my parents’. Nor can I go with the original plan I had, which was to leave the stuff at the house I’ll be moving into. I therefore have (realistically) 4 days to find somewhere to store my stuff over summer. That’ll be interesting.

The reason I have so little time is that I have done three things: Firstly, procrastinated. I have left packing until far too late and now I’m stuck. Secondly, I have promised I would do two things: see my sister and nephew at the end of the month and go to Danni’s the weekend after. Thirdly, I have assumed far too much. I assumed I could move my stuff into the place I am moving into in August; I had been informed that this was the case. Unfortunately, it is not. This has led to the lack of time I am presented with.

It’s not all doom and gloom. I’ll be going to Danni’s in just over a week; I don’t know exactly how long for yet, but it’ll be good! There’s trampolining planned, but other than that nothing much, really.

In other news, I’ve been working on getting Imprudence (which recently had its 1.1.0 release) built under 64-bit Linux. I succeeded, but the number of patches I required to do so and the seeming instability of it both mean that it’s not really suitable for public consumption yet. It works, but seems to crash a lot. Other than that I’ve not really been up to much other than customising my desktop when it comes to Linux.

I can’t think of anything else to mention here, so I shall disappear. If you bothered reading this, thanks

I’ve noticed lately the amount of spam comments I’ve been getting on this blog has levelled out to about 4 a week. Of course, Akismet has been regularly catching them, so none of them appear publicly. This makes spam a non-issue for me, other than clearing the queue every few days.

Anyway, onto what I’ve been up to. This past week, I have had my main PC at a friend’s house. One of his housemates left the day after I put it over there, so we put a bunch of PCs in a LAN party style arrangement and had some gaming and leeching of stuff as a send-off. A week later, the PC is still there. My sleeping patterns have wrapped round. I started off on a normal pattern, went nocturnal and am now back on what can be considered a normal pattern again. Of course, it has been worth it, with lots of gaming done (Team Fortress 2 being the main game played) and being around friends is always good. Food has also been taken care of pretty well and since we’re all eating together considerably cheaper too.

Other than that, I found out that I could claim around £400 in tax over-payments back from the Government. I’ll need to find my P45 to do this, but of course it’ll be very much worth it. Extra money is always a good thing. It meant I’ll be able to cope much more easily over summer and do the things I really want to, which is excellent.

The Hull Linux User Group is also on its way back to being on its feet. It somewhat died a death a while ago and some more organisation is being brought in to ensure it does not disappear completely. Hopefully it will follow a similar path to the one WYLUG did and go from strength to strength. I’ll be out of Hull for the next couple of meetings but I shall be back in August, I think.

The other major thing is my blog theme. I’m getting quite bored of my blog theme now and want something different. I’m on the lookout. Purple is wanted, of course!

EDIT: Theme has been found. To change the colour click the buttons on the top right of the page!

In my last post I discussed the transition I had made in my web presence from Johan to John. In this post I shall have a quick ramble about what I have been up to in the real world.

University has now wound down for the year. The End of Year ball was last weekend and while I didn’t go I found myself chatting to a couple of the people who had been. The first one of these had managed to dismantle their mobile (in that the cover was off, as was the battery). I helped them put it back together and headed back towards home (I’d been at a friend’s for chips). On the way I came across a second person who had been to the ball. They described the night as “not the best ever”, probably due to the fact that the music that was playing – Indie and Drum ‘n’ Bass – was not what they would usually listen to. Anyway, I got back home after the chat with that particular person had ended. It was all quite pleasant despite being 3AM.

On the topic of University, I know that I have failed a module – specifically, the second Maths one. I went into the exam not sure whether I would do well or not, but as soon as the exam started I knew it was going to end badly. My brain decided that it didn’t want to remember anything at all and as such I could not answer even one of the questions properly. Therefore, guaranteed fail. This is not the end of the line though, I can either resit the exam or compensate for it when the results from the other modules come in.

In other news, I have been just here waiting for the contract to be up on the room I’m currently living in. When that has happened I shall be moving back to my parents’ for a bit and depending on circumstances I shall be spending some of that time over at Danni’s. The circumstances will simply change when I visit, not whether I will, so that will be worked out sooner to the time I actually go there. Also, money situation is really not good at the moment. I’m all paid up with rent but unless I can find about another £100 from somewhere I’m going to be really struggling when it comes to September. I shall go and see the bank and see what they can do before working out what to do.

I’m also unsure about moving into the place I signed for a couple of months ago. I have the contract all signed and everything but the certainty ends there. I have no idea where I’m going to put my stuff or even when I’ll be moving my stuff over. I don’t even know where stuff is going to be stored yet. Again, this can be worked out closer to the time but the storage thing needs to be sorted out soon and with as little monetary cost as possible.

I should really be packing for said storage thing, but with not being sure at all with what is going on I am holding off on that front. Despite all this negative stuff I’m actually looking positively into the future. I’ll be moving in with friends soon enough, so it shall be better than the situation now.

It’s (just over) 6 months since I decided to abandon my Second Life-related accounts on other web services such as Twitter and Plurk. My original reasoning for this was that I was leaving SL. This happened, but I returned a short time later. The other accounts, however, remained with my real life details on. Anybody can look up my Plurk, Twitter or even Email account – the details for them are out there. The Plurk account itself is private, however I will always consider a friend adding me on there. So, has this little experiment of mine worked? Has it led me to be more myself online? Well, no, actually.

The only real thing that has changed is the usernames themselves. Instead of them being JohanYugen (or ThePurpleOne as my Twitter account was) they are JohnUK89. I was always showing the “Real Me” even on my JohanYugen username, so what has changed? The presence I now have online is no longer truly tied to my Second Life account. Even where I’ve met people to start in SL, they are starting (or already do) to call me by my real name. Obviously there are a couple who don’t, and for who I shall always be Johan and not John. That is also fine, since I was Johan online for quite some time (about 2 years in total) and continue to be Johan when inside Second Life.

So while I have remained the same person behind the keyboard, save a tad more confidence that I’ve gained over the past 6 months or so, my persona is slightly different. I feel as though I have traversed the gap between being a true citizen of the metaverse and become me online, something I had always wanted to do but never really had the chance to do before I moved away from my parents’. The worrying thing is, my parents would have tried to stop me from having a tangible presence on the Internet as me, so I had to use Johan as a way of avoiding detection. To have the freedom from that and thus being able to be truly me, not just me behind the mask of Johan, is truly empowering. The only conclusion that I can draw is that the experiment I mentioned earlier has worked and I am so much better for it.

Another Erasure lyric as a title – It’s getting to be a thing for my blog posts. Anyway, this one is actually quite apt.

So, I had a brilliant week from a week ago last Saturday till about Thursday. On Saturday I met up with Danni and then went to see WillowC, Ghosty, Willis and Laura and spent a night exxentially chillaxing with them. On the Sunday me and Danni went to Forbidden Planet, where I picked up a couple of posters, then headed back to Danni’s flat, where we spent the next 4 or 5 days generally enjoying each others’ company. We played World of Warcraft, cuddled, snuggled and generally had an awesome time. But then I had to go home. And that’s where the trouble starts. You see, the most wonderful thing about being human (the ability to fall in love) can also be the worst thing (missing the one you love). So here I am, missing Danni. If it weren’t for my woeful inability to cry in situations where anybody else would I’d be requiring a limitless supply of tissues right now, but perhaps that’s for the best. Saves money and all that, which ties in with the rest of the worries I have at the moment.

Uni’s finished until September. Well, it’s meant to have done. I suspect I’ve failed the year. Yes, I’ve failed a foundation year. How useless is that? It doesn’t help that the exam for maths was on the day after coming back from Danni’s, but I knew all the stuff on the course. Yeah, right. Day of the exam, brain decides to remember *nothing*. Bloody thing. So I’m left with a guaranteed fail. I know this because I only did about 25% of the paper and the pass mark is 40%. I can do maths well enough to work out that means I’ve not passed under any circumstances. It’s left me with a few options, each with issues or drawbacks:

1. Resit the exam. For this I need to be in Hull on the day of the exam (in August) AND be able to pass it. If my brain has another day like Friday there’s no chance of that.
2. Resit the year. I would need to get into even more debt to do this, really want to avoid it.
3. Compensate. If I can do this then i will. Will mean I can’t do a free elective and will need to do Quantitive Methods. Of course, this is not guaranteed.
4. Pull out altogether. This would leave me with nothing, essentially. A year wasted and several thousand pounds of debt gained.

Even if I choose to continue at Hull, I have issues. For a start, money is drying up. No money, no roof over head. Parents get chased up for rent. Yeah, you get the picture.Luckily, I have enough to cover the rent for the contract I’m in at the moment, but not for the one I’ve got due to start in August. That leads on to my second major problem…

Which is housing. I have no idea what to do about this. My brain is telling me one thing ad my heart another.I realise that if I leave Hull I’ll be stuck looking for a job again, but if I stay I’ll have to arse around finding a place to live, since it’s looking like the house I signed for with friends won’t have said friends there to move in with. Housing is completely uncertain for me at the moment.

So here I am, no money, lack of knowledge about where I’m going to be living after the summer and unsure as to whether I’ll actually be at Uni after the debacle that was the maths exam. Somebody give me strength.

It’s that time of year again – the country gets excited about the Eurovision Song Contest. Well, some of it does. Not me. There are several major issues that the Contest currently has and will most likely have for the forseeable future.

Firstly, lack of talent. Eurovision seems to be more of an opportunity for countries to laugh at what the others have managed to come up with than an actual show of talent. Dustin the Turkey, Ireland’s entry from last year, is a perfect example of this, but is by no means the only one. This lack of talent has not been addressed by any of the countries involved. Long lost are the days where you’d find acts with true talent at Eurovision, such as Abba.

Second (and the reason I refuse to watch) is bloc voting. Eurovision is now highly political, with countries that are near each other (and usually share the same political ideals) voting for each other. For example, Russia won last year’s contest. The majority of their points came from other eastern bloc and former Soviet nations. We have also seen a steady drop in the amount of points nations that were traditionally strong in Eurovision, such as 7-time winners Ireland, are gaining, so much so that Ireland have failed to even qualify for the past two contests.

Third, and most important for the people organising the contest, is money. The BBC (and thus the UK taxpayer) contributes the most money out of all the participants in the contest. This means they automatically gain entry into the final of the Contest, however the monetary investment is mostly wasted as the UK’s entries have not had much success at all since Katrina and the Waves’ victory in 1997. The Contest is, then, effectively money down the drain for the British public, whose TV licences are contributing to the Contest.

So, three reasons that Eurovision is a waste of time. In my opinion, all three need to be fixed for the Contest to be worth watching at all. However, I shall make a prediction as to the winner of this year’s Contest: Serbia.

Another quote from a song for a title. Seems to be becoming a bit of a theme from me. This time it’s Savage Garden – The Animal Song. Anyway, unrelated to the topic of the post, as with the previous song-related title…

As a few of you know, I have been seeing a mental health worker to attempt to improve my social skills. This seems to be going quite well. I have been setting myself small targets for something to do with respect to socialising. A couple of months ago I exceeded all expectations and went to the meetup with Vint and the folks from Rezzable. I managed to deal with the usual anxiety that I get in a way that allowed me to remain with other people. All in all, I dealt with it very well.

This has led me into other social situations. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a barbecue. I managed to go and it spawned a new Facebook avatar. Those of you who have me added there will be able to see it. Those who don’t, sorry, but I prefer to keep it private. It has my mobile number on, as well as a few other things.

So, so far the socialising thing is going well. It’s not just been beneficial for things like parties and nights out, however. It’s allowed me to work in a group at University much more easily than would have been possible before I started seeing the mental health guy, which has helped the work no end. It’s also allowed me to be a little more free – in that I can walk into shops and speak to the staff. I never used to be able to do that, even.

Related to Uni stuff, I have an essay due in on Wednesday, related to the group work I’ve been doing. That’ll be interesting to get done on Tuesday evening. I have also handed in other courseworks, and have a presentation to worry about for Thursday. Oh joy of joys.

Finally on the topic of the real world, I have been informed by two different people that I will be going on a night out in a couple of weeks. I am blissfully unaware of this (well, was until they informed me) and as such have made no preparations at all for it yet. Looks like I’d better get booking tickets, if I can afford it.

Onto other things. Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released last week. I have it installed on my desktop machine and I’m rather impressed. It’s all so polished and just works. I do miss the configurability and simpleness of Arch, but for a machine that I just want to turn on and use Ubuntu is rather unbeatable. Of course, the EeePC still has Arch installed on it.

I’ve started playing World of Warcraft too. So far I’m at level 73, but I’ve not being letting it get in the way of my studies at all. It’s just for fun, which is all it should ever be.

So I bid you all farewell for another post. Not really that much to talk about on this one but hey, could be worse!