Life

Things that have happened in my life

Merry Christmas!

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Cute Christmas Card

Probably about time I posted my annual Christmas Message, so:

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Since it’s about 9am here we’ve opened our presents here already – I’ve got:

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (film) DVD (sponsored link)
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (BBC TV series) DVD (sponsored link)
  • Cocktail shaker and two cocktail glasses
  • Hiking boots
  • 5 small bottles of Absolut vodka
  • A bottle of Cockspur rum and a bottle of Diaquiri cocktail mix
  • Limoncello nougart
  • Green & Blacks organic dark chocolate
  • 2 tubs of Cadbury’s Heroes
  • A fawn-coloured Next long-sleeved t-shirt
  • A black zip-up top
  • A Van Heusen silk tie (in a posh box)
  • A black Mulberry shirt
  • Some Lindt chocolate Reindeer and a chocolate Santa
  • A box of Hazer Baba Turkish Delight
  • Some House of Commons dark chocolate
  • …and a bottle of Fentimans Curiosity Cola

In other words, I’ll be sat watching DVDs wearing some new clothes and hiking boots, eating chocolate and getting drunk on cocktails 🙂 .

Anyway, for those of you who celebrate Christmas (in whatever way you choose), I hope you have an enjoyable and happy day. 🙂

Post-birthday notes

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  • It’s the morning afternoon after the night before, and I’m actually feeling okay. I did drink a lot (by my standards) last night – mostly Southern Comfort, which, had I drank neat, would have seen me consume half a bottle of the stuff. I am somewhat hungover but I’ve been much, much worse than this before having consumed less, so, yay.
  • I went into town today to put a birthday money cheque into my account at the bank. This is the first time I’ve had to put any cheque in for about 2 months now; normally I have my Google AdSense cheque and rent from my parents to pay in, however thanks to Google introducing EFT and my parents embracing the joys of online banking the money now comes through electronically.
  • On the subject of money, now that I’m 21, I get access to a savings account that my grandmother has been keeping for me. I’m not quite sure how much is in there but it’s not an insignificant amount of money. I don’t need it desperately so I’m probably going to bung it into an ISA for a year or so to amass some interest.
  • There’s a surprisingly high number of Liverpool supporters in Bradford, as I found out last night. Trust me to have a birthday that coincides with one of the most gripping cup finals ever. Well done to Liverpool by the way.
  • I haven’t yet got all of my presents yet, but so far I’ve had a box of Celebrations from work, a blue drinking t-shirt from my parents and some birthday money. And money to buy the TFT screen which I’ll be ordering next week.
  • And now I’m off to the pub for a much-needed cool, caffeinated, non-alcoholic beverage.

To be 21

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I’ve just got back from my 21st birthday celebrations, which, as you can probably tell by me being able to post here, means that I haven’t managed to totally inebriate myself. I am pretty well-plastered, but on the other hand I have been much worse before. I’ll blame it on the fact that we got kicked out of a club due to one of my friends reproducing the contents of her stomach, after which we decided to go home.

Thanks for all the ‘happy birthday’ comments and the TFT screen recommendations; I think I’ve decided on one now so I’ll be ordering it in a few days time. But right now, I really, really need to go to bed.

Oh, on a totally unrelated note, congratulations to Lucio Buffone on getting a Sony Award and a contract with XFM. Lucio is a former University of Bradford student and was Communications Officer of the student union for a year as well as being a DJ on our radio station, Ramair.

Present-ing…

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Hope you are all having a good Christmas! I got lots of presents this morning, including:

My dad also got a DAB digital radio, although it only gets a digital signal upstairs for some reason (and even then can’t pick up all the channels), which is a pity because he wanted to have it in the kitchen.

Update: It would appear that the radio itself is actually faulty – it also has FM and while every other radio in the house gets perfect reception this one seems to pick up interference from somewhere.

My grandparents got a Freeview digibox and a DVD player, along with some DVDs to go with it.

Photographic eye

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You may remember the beach party back in June, which I waxed lyrical about for a few days and then nothing. I took around 170 photos over the two days (a total of 130MB) and still haven’t really got around to sorting them.

Anyway, the student union were given copies of my photos (since I was effectively their photographer) and the good news is that three of them have already been used in union propaganda publicity material, in the form of a leaflet given out to prospective students introducing the union and what it does. Surprisingly enough, student unions are somewhat more than a cheap source of alcohol.

You can have a look at scaled-down versions of the originals. Incidentally those were taken quite late in the day when the sun finally came out.

Beach for the stars

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I’m only able to post a few photos today. I have taken rather more (around 70 to be precise) but they’re not on this computer yet – I’ll probably upload a few at the weekend.

Today we had some schoolchildren and the university nursery use the beach, along with Bradford’s bactive campaign, who roped myself and other union members into “combat aerobics”. After that and then having to rake the sand my body is aching all over. Going out and then only having 6 hours sleep last night didn’t exactly help either…

On the plus side, I got to meet Bradford’s Lord Mayor, who’s actually a really nice guy. And despite all the pain, I did have a thoroughly enjoyable day – roll on Friday!

I’m 20 today!

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Today is my first day as a non-teenager in several years 🙂

It’s not been particularly eventful, mainly because we’re all in the middle of exams and can’t afford the time to either go out or recover from having been out, but it’s been somewhat enjoyable nonetheless.

Presents were the camera that I’ve been talking about, a t-shirt with velcro letters (so you can change the message on the front as often as you like), some socks with my name on, £33 cash (in total), and O’Reilly quick reference books on PHP and Regular Expressions (thanks to Jeff Wright and regular commenter Chris Berkhadt for those 🙂 ).

The cash is going towards a Sega Mega Drive for the house next year – we’ll have a PlayStation 2 as well but you can’t play Sonic on it.

Incidentally, today is also Towel Day.

Boing

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Hope you enjoy that extra day we have to stick in every 4 years so that the seasons remain in order!

No special plans, although I’ve spent almost half of it asleep now since I only just got up. And then when messing around with Real Alternative I realised I’d missed out on this week’s Radio 4 comedy shows, so that was another hour wasted.

Thanks for the comments about the re-design, I’m glad to hear that all of you who have commented like it.

Merry Christmas!

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(oh come on, what else could I have called this entry?)

So it’s Christmas morning, and in fact I have rather more presents than expected – I wasn’t expecting that much since the new laptop was supposed to be a present.

Anyway, you can divide my presents pretty much into three categories: sweets, booze and socks. I have all manner of chocolate, Turkish delight and Kendal mint cake to devour over the coming weeks, plus a selection of mini-bottles of Absolut vodka and two pairs of socks. I also got one of those chargeable mini remote control cars, a new top (which I’m wearing now) and, the main present: a tripod for my camera. It’s quite a good one since it can stand around 5 feet off the ground – I’ve wanted one for doing decent night-time shots as I need something to keep the camera steady, otherwise the picture becomes blurred.

So, it’s off for breakfast. I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and I hope that you get all the presents that you wanted. And don’t get too drunk on the brandy. 😉