Yes, I know. I didn't update when I said I would. Yes, I know it's been over three weeks since I've updated, but you know. I've been busy doing ...
Nothing?
So, what did I do in the vast space of time since I last updated?
The answer to this question, is not a lot.
As stated in my last entry we arrived back from Torquay on the 15th of Feb, and I was shattered! Jess had some sort of dancing show that week, so I had the house to myself on the next day which was kinda cool ... I'm gunna have to do that in a couple of weeks anyway; we have about two weeks for study leave, and mum's gunna have to work for both of those weeks, so I'll be at home by myself anyway.
So what else did I do?
On the Tuesday after we got back, I of course watched the Brit Awards 2010 ; the only proper TV I've watched this year. It was good to watch, except I sort of fell asleep halfway through, which was a bit annoying but hey.
I also purchased Entombed , something I've been meaning to do for ages; and as stated on the website, it has already provided me with "hours of entertainment", something that other audio games haven't been able to do.
School wise, I've been resitting several of the exams that I failed missrably at last year. I actually ended up re-taking a Science Biology paper, and a Maths Number paper; hopefully I've done a lot better on each, but I'll have to wait for the results to appear (if they ever do, that is). To be honest, I can't wait to get out of that school; some people there have serious issues.
So, that pretty much summarises the holidays and what's been going on recently. We've got school photos today, so I guess mum's gunna be making me look what she calls "nice", lol.
Oh yeah, before I go. I've finally set up my own domain, so for everyone who's been asking me to re-upload my podcasts that I did back in 2008, you should be seeing them in the near future ... or something.
For the curious, you can check it out at elliottbarnes.net. I've set up a Shoutcast stream as well, so if you've ever wanted to broadcast on an internet-based radio station, here's your chance; feel free to e-mail me at elliottabarnes@gmail.com and apply for a show.
I should be writing an entry sooner than I did this time; I do apologise for the long delay in updates!

So as sated in my previous entry, I am now in Torquay. I was going to update yesterday, but I was so tired, that the resultant entry would have probably made no sence, so may be it was a good thing that I waited until today to post this.
So on friday, we went directly from school, and finally arived at the hotel at about half five. We did all that boring stuf (unpacking, checking into the room, etc), and went down to tea. This is where the fun began.
Unknown to me, on the table was situated a candel, I assume just to make the atmosphere look nice. However, as everyone always says, never play with fire! It seems that my nan didn't take this advice into consideration, as she decided that, just for fun, she would flick the edge of my napkin into the candle flame, which resulted in the words above. "Excuse me," she calmly stated. "The table's on fire!"
I cracked up at this; she could have been ordering a drink, the tone that she used. The woman who was supposed to be serving us comes over, but she's too late, because my grandad (being the brave and hiroic man that he is), decided to put out the fire of his own accord. In my opinion, this wasn't the best way to start a holiday, but at least it was a funny few minutes.
Yesterday was a better and safer day, however. We all woke up at about quarter to seven (God knows why!), and went down to breakfast at about quarter past nine. After a big breakfast (man that food is nice!), we decided that we would go swimming, which gave us time to relax. Both a Sawna and a Steam Room were present, both of which I decided to enter. The Steam Room was surprisingly warm, but nice at the same time. The Sawna, however, was even warmer! It was all good fun in the end, though.
After we'd finished swimming and getting changed, we went down to lunch. I didn't really feel like eating anything after the huge breakfast that I'd had only a few hours before, but figured that it would be best to eat something, rather than wait until later and be starving. During what seemed like the endless wait when our food was being prepaired, I think we were all half asleep - both the swimming and the late nights had finished us. After eating, we went bolling which was a lot of fun, mainly due to the fact that I actually won, even though I did throw several balls into the lane next door. At dinner, I decided to be adventurous and go for something called the "Icecream Sunday". It arrived, and man that thing was huge! It was topped with several lashings of whipped cream and marshmellows, under which was a thick layer of icecream, and finally at the bottom of the dish was a thick layer of merang. Taking all of that into account, it was no surprise that after finishing I was feeling quite sick! I think an early night did me good, to be honest. Today's been much of the same - swimming, walking, and arcading (new word, anyone?) on the machines that are in the hotel. We leave tomorrow, which kinda sucks. I've enjoyed being out doing something, rather than just sitting at home doing nothing all day.
I'll update somewhen in the week.

Well, not exactly a summer holiday, but a holiday nun the less, even if it is only for a couple of days. We're off to Torquay later on today, and getting back on monday, which should be cool.
Not a lot of interesting stuf has been happening since I posted my last entry; I'm still at school, and if I've worked it out correctly we only have about 70 days left. It's a non uniform day today as well, so at least that's something different, even if it's to raise money for charity.
Jade arrived back from Worcester yesterday, so it was good to see her online again. She's been enfuriatingly busy over the last couple of weeks. I obviously realise it isn't her falt, I guess that's just what happens when you go to 6th form. She's also got me a valentines present, which I'm really interested to get. I need to send hers off today, actually.
I've also been using the Mac a lot recently - I've almost got used to the weird interface that Voice Over uses, and can now successfully use Skype and Safari without any major problems.
Anyway, that's about it. I realised earlier that I haven't updated this journal for over a week, and thought I would do it now while I've got a chance, before the holiday rush begins. We're leaving at about quarter past 3, so I guess we should get there at about half 5, if not later. I'll try and shoot off a quick entry while I'm there; I'm taking my phone (obviously!), and since we're going straight from school I'll also have the laptop. I've installed JoikuSpot on my phone, so I'll at least have internet access, which'll save me having to pay 5 quid to use the hotels shared internet, which is probably slow anyway.
Sorry for the general mess of this entry. I realise that it's unordered, but really can't be bothered to move everything around.
Anyway, I'm off; see you guys when we arrive!

Man, I really have missed writing in here. But which comes first, in your opinion: disinfecting a computer, or updating an LJ?
So, you may be asking, what virus is he on about? Well if you're not and you don't particularly care, too bad; just skip down to the bottom of this entry.
So on sunday morning (the day that I posted my last entry), after checking my e-mails I discovered that a setup for Station Playlist Studio had been posted as a torrent to Demonoid. So, I decided to check it out, and stupidly didn't scan the bloody thing for viruses, (not that it would have found any, but that's not the point). A few seconds later, a webpage opens, saying: "thanks for installing our releases!" I thought nothing of it, until I rebooted and went on Google (as you do). Pop-up windows started appearing, and by this time I new that I had been infected with either spyware or adware. "Easy!" I thought to my self. "You could check in Startup Control Panel and see if anything has been added". So, I proceeded to do this, and was annoyed to see that several password-retreaving tools had been placed in my temp folder, and were being exicuted on start-up. The problem here, wasn't that I didn't know how to disable them from starting when the PC booted; it was that at that moment, a hacker or third-party would potentially have access to my MSN password (I don't actually have Firefox installed on this PC, so Password Fox (another tool that it copied) wouldn't have been able to do any damage). So, after disabling the password-fetching tools, I rebooted, but the ads were still appearing. To cut a long story short, I downloaded the latest version of Nod32 and performed a full system scan ... but of course, no threats were found. I then went through a very boring process of downloading several system diagnostic tools, scanning for rootkits etc, still without any luck. Went to bed that night feeling that that was an utter waste of Sunday. Got back from school on Monday in a "gur'r'r'r'r'r'r'r'r'r'r'r" mood, and this time struck lucky ... I say I struck lucky, but I've actually gotta thank Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for pointing me in the right direction. So did another system scan with Malwarebytes, and was told about a file called sdra64.exe that was located in my %systemroot%\system32 directory, and a bunch of infected registry keys. I removed them and promptly rebooted, and decided to do another scan just to be on the safe side. Upon another scan completion, I was deeply annoyed to discover that the damb file was still there! It was about this time that I decided to give up for another night, and go to bed. Didn't have much of a chance to do anything productive with it on Wednesday because we went out somewhere, but on Thirsday I got back from school and did some serious googling concerning this sdra64.exe file, and thanks to this article found out all I needed to know about the trojan. Basically for you technicalish users (is technicalish even a word?), found out that it basically inserted a line into your HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinet key. So instead of the key containing "C:\Windows\System32\Userinet.exe,", it instead contained "C:\Windows\System32\Userinet.exe, C:\Windows\System32\SDRA64.exe,". You would think that you could just remove the sdra64.exe part off of the end, but oh no! The trojan autimatically detects if any changes are made, and adds the line back accordingly. So after several hours spent installing the free version of Super AntiSpyware, and doing more system scans. Eventually still without finding anything, I decided to do what the article suggested and change the key just as the system was shutting down. To successfully accomplish this, I had to kill all of the svchost.exe processes in task manager, and wait until the resulting dialog stated that the PC would restart in 1 second. I then smashed that enter key like I've never smashed it before, and waited until the PC had rebooted. I logged back in, and was releaved to see that my CPU usage was no longer on 100% all of the time (which was successfully able to kill my battery within an hour), and spent a good hour or two cleaning up all of the crap that it had left behind. I now seem to be clean, but for you geeky guys do you know how I can re-enable autorun? The virus seems to have disabled it.


Onto non-technical things, Dave came round on saturday, which gave me a break from virus removing. It was good to catch up again - I hadn't seen him since August, and obviously since he's at uni he doesn't come down much any more. Didn't do anything on Sunday, but on Monday saw that a new beta of Qwitter had been released. I haven't actually upgraded yet - it seems that some bugs are still present, so I'm going to wait until they've been fixed before I upgrade it on the Netbook. I've been running it from SVN for the last month or so, and I've seen a vast improvement on responsiveness and general usage, so it'll be good to properly get twittering again.
Anyway, sorry for the very technical post - my next one will be more life-orianted, I prommis!

Yes, if my calculations are correct, we only have 15 weeks (not including holidays and weekends) of school left. Scary, hey?
So, what the hell am I doing up this late? To tell you the truth, I don't really no my self. Dads got a guy called Mich staying over for two nights (Mich stands for Michal, not Michael). After we got talking, he seemed like a really nice guy. He's 17, so I guess that sort of helped, him being just over a year older than me and all. He was helping dad set up his Mac, so I just sat and watched them do that for a couple of hours. I'm amazed at how good the in-built microphone actually sounds, and the speaker is decent as well. Helen and Russil (my Godmother and Godfather, respectivly) came down from London for a couple of days, so along with a couple of mums friends they decided to pay us a visit. So while Russil was telling me exciting stories of how he had had to arrest a gang with Oozy guns who had been shooting at someone near by, dad, my uncle and Michal were watching an interesting-sounding video on YouTube of a woman doing pressups, so that was entertaining, especially when my uncle blerts "look at those! My God!" So overall, it was a very enjoyable evening.
On a slightly annoying note, I've found out that I might not, in fact, be able to see Jade next month; her mum wants her to do some activities in the community. Whilst I sort of agree with her, it is a bit annoying that we'll have to wait until at least April until we'll be able to see each other again. That seems like an eternity from now, but hopefully it'll fly by, as has this month has done.
So on that slightly depressing ending, I'm off. Dad and Mich are leaving at about half eight tomorrow, so I want to attempt and be awake to say goodbye and all that fun stuff, or something. I was planning on listening to borrisinabox on TBRN, but don't think I can muster the energy to stay up for another 3 and a half hours, lol. Not that I'd do that anyway - that would be a ridiculous time to go to bed!

Hey, what's uuuuuuuup? Or something. I've just been on the LJ site, and noticed that I haven't updated in over a week, which is actually against my rule of "at least one update in a week." Oh well, I'm here now, so does it really matter that I should have posted on sunday or before? I don't think so.
So ... what's occuring? Sorry for the subject line btw, I've just been listening to Scott Mills on Radio 1, and thought that "oh! what's occuring" would be a good subject line, and therefore decided to use it.
Well, its been back to exams for me, unfortunately. Yesterday I had both Chemistry and music (Chemistry was a real exam, I might add, and music was a mock), and tomorrow I've got my Physics exam (which is also real). Personally, I don't feel that it went too badly, but we'll just have to weight and see. That's what teachers put us through exams for anyway, right? Or perhaps not ... I'm not a teacher, so I can't say either way.
I got my English result, which I'm really happy with. I was one mark off a B, and I was expecting to get a low C, so that's a vast improvement. I personally think that my English has improved a lot in the last year (mainly due to blogging, I think), and since the exam is mostly about testing your English skills it went down pretty well. Talking of English, today someone suggested a fantastic idea: writing an erotic novel. Now, how about I write a book called the "erotic novel, from a blind persons perspective." How about that? Or may be I won't ... I don't know much about it my self, after all. And as to what I mean when I'm referring to "it", I'm sure you guys know what I mean. Rofl.
As to the music exam, I've got a feeling that it didn't go as well as English and science. For starters, I couldn't answer a question that was worth 10 marks, because I didn't actually have the musical knowledge ... not that I had any musical knowledge in the first place, but you get my point. I'm hoping at least for D, but we shall see.
So I think that's all I've got to say this time. We're trying to sort out when I can go and see Jade again next month, which is cool. Dads actually going to India on the 12th, and getting back on the 28th. Hopefully mum will be able to sort something out ... may be we could meet halfway or something? Just an idea, but I guess it would work.
Oh yeah and before I forget, I've finally got a new, shiny, sexy, fantastic, stylish, fast, relyable new phone: the Nokia E71. I finally got rid of that N95 8 GB, and now use the E71 as my primary phone. I'm particularly impressed with the 15 MA battery (for the non-technical, it basically means that it lasts me a lot longer), and since I purchased an 8 GB SD card to go along with it I've got that as well, so I'm not at all short on memory. The only thing I'm still trying to get used to is the QWERTY keybored, but I'll hopefully be typing up to speed soon enough. The only thing I really miss about the N95 is the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, which basically meant that I could plug in any old pair of headphones and use them, as aposed to the E71 where I have to use the headphones spasifically modeled for that phone.
Ok, so that's really it. I'll be back when I've got something of some interest to say, or something.

So its now the tenth, and I said that I would post an entry on Tuesday. In my own defence a lot has been going on around here. I know that's not really a good excuse, but its the only one I can think of at the moment.
So what's been happening with me?
Ok, lets take events in a cronilogical order, just to make things simple.
On monday, I of course completed both maths papers, and History paper 1. Maths wasn't actually as bad as I made it out to be, so I'm at least hoping to get a C (anything above that would be amazing, but I'm not getting my hopes up). History was also ok, although I really struggled with the last three parts of the last question. I got it in the end though, which is all that matters, I guess. Went home feeling that everything went well, although I'm still awaiting results, which should be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.
Tuesday was practically the same, but instead of having Maths and History I instead had English. Again, that didn't go badly, and I'm hoping for a C (if not higher). For some stupid reason I'm predicted an E, which in both mine and my English teachers opinion is ridiculous. Cmon, this journal would get an A if an English teacher looked at it, right. Perhaps not, but...
On tuesday night, I charged (and tried out) my new set of Philips wireless headphones. I can't actually remember the model off hand, but let me tell you that I've never heard sound like the sound that those headphones produce before. I'm really pleased with them; the sound is ausom, battery life is reasonable (they're rechargeable which makes things a lot easier on my part), and very portable. The wireless transmiter transmits a frequency on FM, which unfortunately can't be picked up on either of my FM radios; I'm not sure if Philips did this intentionally, but I guess it doesn't matter either way.
Now to the fun part of the week ...
We'd been predicted snow for the rest of the week, but me being who i am didn't think it would come to anything; I've lived in this damb country long enough to know that the weather is usually always wrong. However, this didn't appear to be the case on wednesday morning. After checking the Weather Underground Braille site, it was pretty obvious that we'd had snow. A lot of the stuff, as well. So, that pretty much decided my day. Just to be sure, I checked the school website, and sure enough my suspitions were confirmed. School was closed, at least for wednesday, and little did I know thirsday as well. So I resorted to staying in bed for a little while, and then promptly got showered, dressed, and all of that boring stuff. At about half twelve, mum and dad decided that we were going out. So half an hour later I had my shoes, hat and gloves, and we left the house.
So that was pretty much Wednesday over and done with. We got home, had food, went to bed, and I proceeded to continue listening to the last book in the Twilight set of books.
Thirsday began on a similar note to the previous day. Checked the Weather underground Braille site, and once again was pleased to see yet more snow! Again, checked our school site, and was told once again that it was closed. Later on in the day I decided to be adventurous, and try running Qwitter from SVN. As Borat says, this turned out to be a "greight success!", which is all good.
However, friday was ridiculous. Got up at six as usual, and soon discovered from some guys on Facebook that despite the weather, school was in fact, open. Got dressed, and the taxi arrived. However, upon arriving at school, I was very annoyed to find out that out of the two hundred and fifty or so people in our year, only thirty-seven could be bothered to get their asses out of bed. Considering this annoying fact, I did actually manage to be productive on friday afternoon, and finish History paper 1. I didn't have time to start paper 2, but I guess I'll be starting that next week. Arrived home at about four, and was happy to find out that the Watch that I ordered from the RNIB had arrived. After experimenting with the time settings for about five minutes, I quickly realised that I'd somehow managed to bugger up the settings. After a few more minutes of both me and mum fiddling, I managed to get it to auto-update with the built-in auto update time feature, so its now working as it should.
So readers, that's all I've got to say on the matter of schools, exams, and snow. I hope you've enjoyed this semi-interesting (or not) article. Btw, just out of self interest, can all of you guys who read this article leave me a comment? I'm just interested to see how many people actually are reading this journal.
Thanks guys!

So, Christmas and new year have come to an end. It was a good Christmas this year, and a fantastic few days there after, obviously due to Jade coming round. On the subject of Jade, we should be meetting up again soon, which will be really cool.
So now what?
Well, I've got a Maths and a History paper one mock to do today, which I'm well-prepared for. Hang on, did I just say I'm prepared for an exam? That must be a first!
But seriously: I've googled, read and researched, so I think I'm ready. I'm not looking forward to the maths mock, because its module 5 which is all about ... shape and space. I'm hoping that the history paper will be a lot easier, but we'll just have to weight and see.
Onto other news, my Sonus 1XT DAB digital radio decided that it would die after Jade left on thirsday. Come on, I was upset too, but I didn't die, did I? I think its down to the adaptor, since if I hold it in the plug when the radio is bootting it seems to work. So I've sent an e-mail off to Pure Digital, and still awaiting a response.
On saturday I ordered a Radio controlled talking Watch from the RNIB, which'll be cool to have a look at when it arrives.
So that's about it for this entry. I'm off for a shower in about ten minutes, so I'm gunna do a bit of last-minute revision for this exam, or something. If I'm still alive by the end of today, I'll either post an entry today or tomorrow letting you guys know how the exams went.

Note: I meant to post this entry yesterday, but due to other time commitments was unable too. So have it now, or something.

So: we left home at about twelve, and dropped Jade off at junction 18 with her parents at about half past. It was a sort of emotional goodbye, both of us knowing that we probably won't be seeing each other until February, which is an entire two months away. To you readers it might not seem like a long time, but to a person who only gets to see his girlfriend every school holiday it seems like an eternity. On the way back from dropping Jade off, I was lost in thoughts about how her parents actually seem to be happy for us that we're together, unlike the last relationship I was in: but we won't go there. It really cheered me up to see a Facebook message from Jades mum saying "on our way down to Bath, Jades going to spend a couple of days with her boyfriend. X". I'm glad that she actually refers to me as a boyfriend, and not just a friend: they're two different things, after all. It just makes me feel that her parents are happy that we're together (which of course they are, at least I hope). It would be an utter disaster if they wern't, as obviously they're the ones who have to either bring her down to Bath, or let me come up to London for a couple of days.
So what else happened?
Well, I got my "new" N95 8 GB, which in fact was a crappy second hand one, that O2 decided to give me, instead of the new replacement handset that they had told me that I would be getting. So today I'm going to ring them, and either hopefully get them to send me out another phone, or pay my self out of the contract that I'm currently in.
So I guess its time for me to depart. I've got an N73 on my bed(which at least is a half deasent phone), with a message stuck in its outbox that O2s message centre decided not to deliver yesterday. Guess that's another thing for me to try and fix.
With that, I've only got one more thing to say: happy new year, happy 2010, happy new decade, and happy what ever else you what to be happy about.
Update (12:09): Just rang O2, and was told that if I wanted to pay my self out of my contract, I would have to pay £390. Um ... how about no? So after a bit of persuasion, they're now sending me a Nokia E71. I'll have to get used to typing on it, how do you guys find it?
Update (12:22): a reboot of the N73 seemed to fix the message sending issue. They seem to have sent now.

So welcome to my third night of staying up late, or something. As previously mentioned in this entry, Jade arrived this morning at about half eleven. It was a good (if not a quick morning), mostly spent unpacking stuff into the spare room. The afternoon went by just as quick. Some of Jess's friends were over, so they stayed for tea. Tea was quite a funny afare, mainly due to me and Jess speaking with American axxents (which really annoys mum). Some of our uncles and anti's also stayed, which meant that I had to do the whole introducing thing, not that I minded of course.
So now we're both ready for bed (me in my room and Jade in the spare room respectivly). Tomorrow looks promising, although I haven't got a clue as to what we might be doing.
Oh well, I'll probably spend another hour or two playing Shades of Doom, just for something to do. I'll thus hit the send button, and enjoy the remaining time that I have with Jade before she goes back home.
To the rest of you readers, enjoy the last 30th of December of this decade ; its not as if its gunna happen again, is it?

Well good night/morning everyone.
I meant to post an entry on Christmas day, but sort of didn't get the chance. I also meant to post one yesterday, but we were out for the majority of the day so didn't get a chance either.
So, lets start with the most important part of Christmas: the presents!
I got the obvious stuf - clothes, underware, etc. Getting onto the technical side of things: I got a 16 GB memory stick, two pairs of headphones (one wireless, one line in), a new Netgear WGN 2000 router, a couple of games for the Wii, and some other stuff that my brain refuses to remember at this time of the morning.
Overall, it was a good day: we stayed at home, and had some people over for lunch and tea, which was nice. We've mostly spent the last two days out-and-about, as it were, delivering presents and such.
The last couple of hours have been interesting in a sort of "when is this going to end?" kind of way. I decided to attempt to set up the new router, just for something to do. It began well: we unpacked the router, unplugged the old Life Echo 520 S router (I think that's the moddle name), and replaced it with this one. This is when the problems began. A CD had been provided with the router, but me (being the experienced, or perhaps not) person that I am decided not to take the easy way out, and configure it through the web interface instead. So off I go, trying to log into the router. This is where it all started to go downhill. For some reason, I couldn't log in: its common fgor most routers to both have a username and password of "admin", but it appeared that this router was an exception. Trying (without success) to search for it on Google (obviously because I didn't have a connection), I resorted to googling it on my phone, which considering the circomstances went quite well. Now came the tricky part. After entering my username and password, I proseeded to go to the configuration wizard. After completing that, I then had a look at the wireless settings, and decided that I needed someone who knew more about routers than I did to have a look at it. So three hours later, thanks to jamesscholes000 I think we're finally there.
Anyway, that's about it for this entry I think. I can't really think of anything else to write, and its 1:07 here, so I think its time for bead. After all, I'll probably be up in about 5 hours. Who knows.
I'll probably write a quick entry when Jades here, just to let you know what we've gotten up too (or perhaps not?).
So for now, good morning!

Good (or may be not), after noon all. This is just a quick entry to let you know that yes, I still do exist and no, I haven't been driven insane by science, at least not yet.
I haven't really been doing much since my last mildly depressing entry that I wrote on monday, apart from playing a cool, new online version of Monopoly Its cool, because apart from a PC version a web version has also been created, which allows it to be cross-platform. Unfortunately the Symbian web browser doesn't seem to like it that much, but hopefully that'll be fixed in an upcoming release.
On a happier note, we finally! arranged when Jade is coming down: she's now coming down from the twenty ninth until the thirty first, whenever that is. I think its from the tuesday until the thirsday of next week, but I could be wrong, as I am on so many occations. And yes, I know I spellt that wrong, but I can't be bothered to correct it. so you'll just have to live with it, won't you? Its still not as good as her coming down for new year, but its better than her just staying one night.
Anyway, I'm off into Bath now, I think. And no, I'm not off to have a bath. I've never actually thought about writing an LJ entry in the bath before. May be I should try it one day? Perhaps not.
Oh and before I hit the post button, why the hel is horny in the list of moods in Semagic?
Weird!

For readers who have the missfortune (or may be not, depending on how you look at it) of knowing me personally, you will know that I've been together with Jade for over a year now. So may be your wondering, what's happened to make me post this entry?
The short answer is, nothing. We're still together (or we were at least 25 minutes ago, which I hope hasn't changed in that small amount of time). We've just aranged a time for Jade to be dropped off here (from the 28th until the 29th, if memory recalls correctly). Now, don't get me wrong: I'm over the moon that we'll get to see each other at least once this Christmas ; its not as if my parents have to let her stay, and its not as if her parents have to bring her down, after all. However, I think we were both hoping that it would be for longer. Take this summer, for example. The day after my birthday (the 26th of July), I went up to stay at Jades house for one night because dad had to do some Cricket-related stuf in London. I was of course happy, because it meant that because dad was in London anyway, he could drop me off on the way. I won't go into big detail of what we got up to: my ramblings for those couple of days can be found in this entry, on my other blog. I also got to spend two nights at her house from the 26th until the 28th of August, which was of course better because it meant that we could spend two days together compared to the one night back in July.
After the summer holidays had grinded to a holt and we both had to go back to the place of torcher (otherwise knownw as school), we had to weight until October until we could see each other again. Now as I've said before: don't get me wrong, any time that we get to see each other is spent as happily as possible. But I've always wondered what its like for people who have boyfriends and girlfriends who they get to see every week, such as Tatom (Jades roommate). Her boyfriend gets to come down to Worcester at least every two weeks, and see her. In my opinion, they don't realise how lucky they are getting to see their boyfriends more in 12 weeks than me and Jade get to see each other a year.
So for the next couple of days, I'm gunna sit here, and weight for the 28th. But trust me, as soon as its here, it'll be gone quicker than you can say "hello". Or may be not, but you get my point.
Now before anyone has a go at me for this entry: I'm not implying in any shape or form that I'm not happy being with Jade. I'm so happy that we've lasted as long as we have, and even though we do live about two hours away from each other it hasn't changed anything, and it will never get in the way of our relationship.
I think I've expostulated enough now, so I'm off to get elliottsblog.info to redirect to this journal, or something.
I really hope you guys are feeling a little more Christmasy than I'm feeling right now.
I'm off to do some more science revision. Do you really think that'll help?
No, I didn't think so either.
I'll hopefully feel better in a few minutes, I just wished Jade was staying for longer!
I'll shut up and go away now.
Good night!

Update (14:54, twenty third December): this entry doesn't really count now, because we got arrangements sorted. Will I delete it? Probably not, but who cares.

Rage against the Machine!
Those were the words that reached my eardrums as i asended the stairs to my bedroom. I was doumfounded: I had felt certain that Joe (the gay winner of the X-Factor, according to my dad) would get to number one. In a way, I feel sorry for him: after all, he is the first person not to get to number one, at least from an X-Factor point of view. Judging by the Facebook status messages that Jade has posted, she's not pleased, as is my mum.
I just thought I would post an entry, seeing as I'm sitting here doing two lots of science revision (one lot from yesterday, and one lot from today). I really should have done some yesterday, but we went out to some friends last night, and got in at about half 12, and actually got into bed at about one. Its bloody ridiculous, we've been given revision for every day of the holiday apart from Christmas day, new years eve (which I won't be doing any fore anyway because Jade should be round), and new years day. Our science teacher told us not to do any on Christmas day and new years day because "those are the two days for getting pissed". Not that I'll be getting pissed, but you get the point.
Or do you?
I don't know, and I don't particularly care either.
Overall, so far the christmas holidays have been avarage. We're going out to lunch with some of dads friends tomorrow, which at least will get me out from behind my computer screen. I've also managed to set up Audiomatic today, which I've been meaning to do for a few days. Support didn't actually get back to my email, which I wasn't particularly pleased about, but who cares. I managed to enter the license key without any issues in the end, even though now every time I try and activate command moad it seems to autimatically be launching one of my macros, and sometimes not starting when I hit enter on the icon.
Well, that's it for this entry: it was just to let you know that I was still alive, still existing, and that I haven't been driven insane by revision (not yet, at least).
Update (21:07): just after posting that entry, Jess announced that we had snow. After going outside, it appears that she was right: yes, we do have snow: and its not that crap excuse for snow either. Its quite deep, and hopefully it'll settle as well!

Well, after 6 weeks of working, weighting, living and existing, the last day of school has finally arrived. We're only in school for a half day today, which seems a bit pointless to me, but what ever.
Moving on swiftly: with only 7 days until Christmas day, I've had people asking me what presents I would like. I originally asked for a PC, but realising that that was a bit too much to ask for (at least at the moment), started looking at smaller things.
Mum bought me a licence for Audiomatic yesterday. I've yet to try it out, however, because I'm confused as to how I'm supposed to enter my key. The email containing the key sent ok but the key is in a strange format. I've emailed support, but I'm still weighting for a response. It also didn't help that the stupid company don't accept sending emails to free email services (such as Hotmail and Gmail), but I got around this by using @googlemail.com instead of @gmail.com, which it didn't complain about. When I finally get this licence key entered, its gunna be cool that I'll finally be able to say "computer, shut down!" and it does what I tell it to. It really is a really cool application, considering that its only about 7 quid (including VAT).
Aside from that, I've also been looking at the Freedom Universal Bluetooth Keyboard which looks promising. I like the idea of being able to type text messages, emails, and LJ entries at roughly the same speed as I type them on my laptop or Netbook. The only thing that puts me off is the price. £59 is quite a lot for a keyboard, although I may look elsewhere to see if anyone is offering it cheeper. I've also asked for a 6 cell battery for my Dell Inspiron 1010, and an extented battery for my Nokia N95 8 GB. I obviously realise all of this equates to about £250. That's the problem: as you grow up, the presents that you want start to go up in cost. At least when your smaller, you don't really mind what your family get you. This morning I handed out my presents on the taxi: some lip stuf to Amber, some alcahol to the driver, and what I thought was a box of chocolates to Shaun (which turned out to be some deoderent). After that small mishap, I was promptly handed a box of chocolates by Shaun, one of which is now gone as I was feeling a bit hungry on the way to school.

Onto other news, earlier in the week I tried an email client for my phone called Emoze which seems quite cool. It adds an option to the messaging app, which means that I can just leave it on in the background. It fetches new emails as they come in, and alerts me with a sound. It works quite well with Talks as well, which is a bonus. Even though it acts as a push email client (which according to
jamesscholes000 is only for old business men), it does what I need it to, and its much more convenient than using the Gmail mobile sight.
Mum also said that tomorrow she would ring Jades mum and try and sort out what's going on for new year, which will be cool.
Anyway, I'm off for a music lesson, that I'm gunna eat, then I'm outa here!
Update (13:19): school finished. Now time go leave!

While reading through my emails yesterday, I saw one with the subject "Skype for Symbian beta released." From past experience, I knew that a light version of Skype had been released. However, since that version was written in crappy mobile java, Talks couldn't read any of the screens, and I decided to give Fring a go instead. The call quality was ok for what I needed it for, but since you constantly had to switch to the Talks object viewer to read chat messages it was a pain in the arse.
So when I saw this email subject, I was hoping that it would be accessible, and guess what? it is!

After downloading the Skype installer to my Nokia N95 8 GB, the first thing I noticed was that the .sis installer was 4.2 mb, which is quite big for a symbian app. It took about a minute to download over my 3G connection, and not long at all to install. The website suggests that you install it to your phone memory, prasumibly because it means that the phone will be able to load it faster. I'd also read from the same email that if you don't install it to the phone memory, the ringing sounds don't play.
The only thing I don't like about the installation process is that it installs about 4 other apps along with it, which I guess it needs to run.

After installing the app, I ran it from the applications menu, and entered my username and password. After signing in, I was presented with 5 choices: online contacts, IM chats, history, and 2 others which I can't remember at the moment. On hitting select on the contacts option, you are presented with a list of all of your contacts, although you can limit the list to your online contacts only from the view menu.
Hitting select on a contact brings up two choices: ring, and start an IM setion. And guess what? IM chats are read by Talks which is a bonus.

Overall, the client is very accessible and usable, even in its current beta stage.

So now lets get to the fun part: the links!

If you want to read the release notes and the user guide, then use This link

If you want to directly download the client without reading any documentation or whatever, then use This link if you've got a phone with S60 FP1, or this link if you've got a phone running S60 FP2. It appears that both of the links actually take you to the same place, but whatever.
Happy skyping, or something.

Update (09:31, Dec 13th): A bug exists in this version which only lets you sign in once. If you attempt and signing in again, the app will just hang and do nothing. I would suggest not downloaidng until this has been fixed.

Well its been a while, hasn't it? According to Live Journal, the last time I updated was like a week ago, which is like really bad.
Apoligies in advance for the very long and confusing subject line, but all will be made clear if you continue reading.
Lets start with Spotify.
A couple of months ago, I decided to create an account on Spotify, because I'd heard people talking about it, and I just thought I'd give it a go.
On downloading the client, I quickly found out that navigating through the app wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. For example, you couldn't see which song you were focused on, etc. So, after googling around for a little while, I found these scripts, which overall make the Spotify experience more enjoyable. Don't forget that upon extracting the scripts to your settings directory, you will need to recompile Spotify.jss in Script Manager, otherwise they'll be in Spanish. Of course, if your reading this and your Spanish, then they'res no need for the recompiling process. Not that I've got anything against Spanish people or anything, but I just thought that I'd point that out.
Another note: those scripts are for XP. If your running Vista (god knows why you would, but hey), then you'll need to use this link instead.
Next, Loadstone. Yes, I know Loadstone is open-source, but for what it is its a usable product. I know programs such as Wayfinder Access offer more features and functions. However, Loadstone has improved a lot in the last couple of weeks. And its not just a small change either. Before people start thinking, "what is he going on about", no you haven't missed any new versions or anything. A couple of weeks ago, a guy announced on the Loadstone mailing list that he'd created a tool called Groute which lets you generate maps using the same API that Google Maps uses. This basically means that we can now enter a predefined starting and ending address, and download a generated checkpoints file that includes directions. Although not as good as Wayfinder Access which lets you calculate roots on-the-fly, this is a significont improvement.
And now, the final one: building sights?
Yes, I'm not going mad, or am I Who knows. Well, I'll say this: Mums having a new kitchen installedi n the house, and its a huge pain in the arse, mainly because all the units have moved and the kitchen seems really open and stuf, and its quite hard to havigate. She's hoping to have it done by christmas, because everyones coming round to us, so we'll have to see!
Anyways, that's about it for this entry. I'm currently sitting in a free lesson at school, and since I've got nothing better to do than update my LJ, I thought that I'd do just that.
Btw, I'd heard that Fairytaile of New York song on the radio yesterday. Does that offitially mean its christmas?

Yes, unfortunately the science mock exams have arrived. What a horrible start to december! I'm currently standing outside what i hope is the room where i'll be doing the 2 exams which in total mean that i'll be in here for about 3 hours.
Well, wish me good luck!

Yes, they certainly do, especially considering that I have a science exam tomorrow, which I hate with a passion!
Anyway, its not all bad. Have this , a random battle mp3 I found whilst reading my emails from the Entombed list this morning.
I've also been listening to borrisinabox on TBRN, doing his fantastic things and stuf, which is always entertaining to listen to.
Anyway, I'm off to get breakfast, or something.

Update (21:01): Got an A star in a history exam that I did a few weeks ago, so I guess its not all bad.

I am testing Semagic.