Happy New Year
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yet another year, the final one of university with luck. The one where I find work.
It was a calm celebration, nothing more than watching television whilst watching television.
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The Summer of Barbecues
Byrichard
It would seem that this will be the summer of barbecues because of the amount of meat leftover from last night. With a friend, we went over to France and bought four kilos of meat, a nice little quantity. Too much for two friends to eat in one sitting but that’s what happened last night.
Out of curiosity I wanted to see whether a Facebook invite to a barbecue would be enough, in Switzerland to have a party and it appears it wasn’t. As a result of this, I have a kilo of sausages and a kilo of chicken leftover to enjoy but there’s no way I’m going to get through that in one sitting so I’m going to have a series of barbecues over the next two or three days.
Much clearer
Byrichard
I went for a meeting today and the documentary idea is far clearer now than before. Thanks to the help of the tutor I’ve got a far more focused way of looking at the question I wanted to ask. I still need to write a third draft of the proposal and get it approved.
In the meantime I can already start writing the introduction to the dissertation explaining the context and setting the scene for the remainder of the document.
Going to be fun from now on.
Finding a new flat
Byrichard
There are a lot of people currently in need of a new identity due to their university lives coming to an end and I am one of them. Today I went flat hunting and there are a few things I found out about myself. The first of these is that I really don’t want to live in a box room. I went into a room today and it was so small I would soon hate living there.
Another truth is that I have lived with one wall to a kitchen in the place where I am living for the past three years. What this means is that when the last person is chatting in the corridor is chatting in the corridor I will hear it. When the first person wakes up and goes to the kitchen and moves things I will hear it. The net effect is napping, as would wildlife in order to survive.
I don’t want the landlord living in the same house. There is something wrong with a landlord living in the house, mainly they have authority and ownership. If you throw a party they will come but charge you later for the damage. If they leave all the lights on you will foot the power bill. If they get sky you will also pay the bill. If you enjoy going out then you will not take as much advantage of these things.
I want to be further from the living room. The living room is the worst place to live next too. Of course I love being sociable. Had I not been banned from the local bar I would have gone there every day for three years, almost, due to my friends being there. Recently I’ve been out two or three times in two weeks. Some level of passion died in me when my ban occurred.
I want to be where it all happens. I want to be closer to the centre of town where I can walk to where things are going on. I want to be free to go out without having the consideration of “can I handle a 45 minute ride on a London nightbus”.
There are a number of things I would like from a flat. One of these is having space. I want to have enough space to store my possessions and keep the floor as tidy as possible. I want a clean kitchen and I want some space in the fridge if possible.
I want to make friends with those I move in and see that they are living interesting and diverse lives. I do not want unimaginative idiots who think only of getting drunk (to be distinguished from going out every night to be sociable. They’re two different things). I want to be close to a few shops so that I may go shopping and actually want the food that is on offer. I want to look forward to dropping by and finding a diversity of meals I can prepare.
I want to be able to lock my door, I want good plumbing, none of that bath dripping down into the kitchen as I’ve experienced. I don’t want a tile floor on wooden floor boards. Wood moves and tiles don’t bend that way.
Overall I want to find a flat that would feel like home. I want somewhere where I have a few friends, where I can be social if I want to but when I want isolation and if I need sleep for an early morning job I can.
I’m looking forward to finding a new house and the life it will bring with it.
Like An Airport
Byrichard
Most of the rooms are empty and cars are parked everywhere. That’s because today is the penultimate day of halls and everyone is leaving. Tomorrow at 10am all rooms should have been evacuated for the cleaning services to come and prepare the rooms for the summer groups.
It feels like me like waiting for a plane, everything is packed and there’s not much to do until tonight’s party. The bedroom is cleaned and stuff is packed. It’s pretty quiet, many people leaving, everything is finished now.
I’m looking forward to living in a more diverse part of London which will serve as a base for my job seeking. It’s going to be nice when, tomorrow, I have moved in to my new flat properly.
The Ten Thousand Word Project
Byrichard
Yesterday I woke up and within half an hour started working on my dissertation. For a few minutes, I added one or two more paragraphs of text before going on a search for interviews. I looked up Cousteau and arrived at the INA page. The INA is the french video archive online.
It’s there that I found a quote from Jacques Yves Cousteau during the 1956 Cannes Film festival where he was talking about his documentaries. There are three elements that are perfect for the purpose of my dissertation therefore I am happy to have found that resource. It’s made me feel more relaxed.
Add to this the fact that I’m up to 5800 words and you’ll understand that this current state of affairs is quite pleasant. I need to write almost four thousand more words by Sunday to be on track with my own project. We’ll see whether I achieve this goal.
I have heard from a friend that some idiots are getting so stressed about the dissertation that they going to doctors to get medication to calm them down and this goes against all logic. If your dissertation is stressing you then there’s one key element that will calm you down: Do your work!! Why are the doctors giving people drugs to calm them down when it’s a psychological problem because they’re too idiotic to relax in a logical way. The doctors are stupid for giving the medication and those taking drugs are idiots for taking them.
Rather than give people drugs why not give them time management lessons instead. That’s the real issue.
Anyway, my dissertation is going well and if I reach my target of 10,000 words by Sunday evening then I will have three weeks of revision to go through. I will see whether I can meet my module leader for one last time as soon as the April Holidays are finished to make sure that the content is correct. I want to do well so I might as well put in as much time as I can to get it finished on time and to the highest standard possible.
That’s why I’m procrastinating through the process of blogging 😉
Sharing Videos With Facebook
Byrichard
Through technology such as that available on Facebook, video sharing has become quite a bit easier. Whereas on a website like youtube where you share video footage with the world on Facebook you select who you share your videos with.
There are three settings, share with everyone on your network, including all friends, share with everyone who is tagged in the videos and their friends, or simply restrict it to your friends. I particularly like the option to share between your friends and the friends of tagged friends because it’s so flexible. we don’t have the same friends so it’s a good method by which to distribute videos, best of all it’s free.
Another feature that’s interesting is key frames. You can cycle through up to ten screenshots of your video and find the frame you feel is best suited to illustrate the video. It’s as easy to select a frame as to when you’re sharing a website with your network.
I have run into a number of limitations. The video must be under ten minutes in duration and 200 megabytes in size. Keep in mind that the video will be converted to the FLV format which can be read on almost all browsers.
I’ve uploaded seven videos already and so far the interface has behaved well. I managed to upload a 50+ megabyte video but due to its length being too long the software complained. I also tried to upload an iPod format video and it complained as well so that’s something I think they should work on.
It’s not going to replace the broadcast machine interface I’ve installed on my website but it’s a good method by which to share amateur videos between friends and for those who would like to do it professionally to showcase some of their better work.
Two additional video options are uploading by mobile phone and recording from your webcam. The recording from webcam is a feature that’s interesting if you’re in a public place with your laptop and you’re uploading video of specific events. I’ll try uploading video from the mobile phone at a future date.
As I see it this is yet another strong feature that has been added to Facebook and unlike the fortune cookies, I like software and others this is something that helps promote the imagined and real communities I discussed in a recent essay. (That essay will be uploaded once it’s been moderated properly).
I’m going to take some time to convert and upload quite a few more videos to Facebook over the coming weeks and months.