Trust Tommy

Tommy Collison at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition from Alexia Golez on Vimeo.

*

The ever-awesome Alexia did an interview with me at the Young Scientist, just before the award ceremony.

I’m telling you, she should work with RTE. John always called me ‘a little politician’. Lex! Let us combine our talents and rule the world!

Read on Rick’s (O’Shea, not Astley) blog about a lecturer of classical literature who has started quoting Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley (more commonly known as the RickRoll song) in each of his classes.

As he says..

The project is simple: I’m a lecturer in liberal arts teaching adults literature on a college programme, and my object is to Rickroll every lecture and tutorial class I teach over the course of this semester. Your standard Rickroll would, of course, be to offer some poor dupe a misleading link which, when clicked, will redirect him to a video of Rick Astley’s classic 80s hit Never Gonna Give You Up. For a man of letters, however, that kind of trickery isn’t subtle enough. Plus, I don’t want to be unethical and waste actual teaching time playing pranks on the students – this is only a game, and their education of course comes first. So what I intend to do is to slip a phrase, or lyric, from the song into every one of my classes, and use this blog to record the convoluted ploys I use to work Rick’s magic into my students’ lives.

How long will it take them to rumble me? Let’s find out!

How awesome is he? :D

He hasn’t even been rumbled yet!

His site

This news just in.. :)

Click to see full size

Hopefully it should clear up soon. Hopefully :)

One of the questions everyone asks me is what I want to do when I finish up secondary school. After we get past the joke about just failing Transition Year again and again so I can ride out the recession, the questioner usually stops laughing after a while. “No, really?”

Truth is, I don’t know. I actually have no idea. Do I want to stick to something somewhat similar to blogging and maybe do Journalism? Do I want to stick to computers in general and do something like Computer Sciences.

One thing that everybody (incorrectly) assumes is that I want to follow in Patrick’s (and possibly John’s) foot steps and go to college in America. I don’t think I do. I mean, it’s a lovely place, especially outside the big cities.

^^ That was the trip myself, Mum and Dad made in July 2007. Freaking awesome. We started in Minneapolis, MN, which is where I had a meeting with the surgeon who operated on me in 04. It was obviously at this time that the two langers were working on Auctomatic in San Fran. We drove from MN to CA, going through South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada on the way. We took 6 days, stopping overnight in motels of, er, varying quality.

One of the highlights of that trip was definitely Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Absolutely amazing. It’s the size of Munster, so it’s not your average park. It was established in the 1872, making it the oldest in the world. Home to Old Faithful, the most reliable geyser in the west.*

We arrived into San Fran with a full week to enjoy ourselves. We spent it seeing the Golden Gate bridge, the cool houses, Alcatraz and even.. *drum roll* the legendary Auctomatic office! :P

San Fransisco is amazing. So many memories flooding back as I scroll down the wikipedia article. One thing that stuck us was that it was never particularly cold, or warm. In January, the temperature varies between 14 and 7, which is very mild indeed.

I’d definitely love to do it again. I’d love to (hope this makes sense) go along the Route66’s general direction, except when it veers toward Michegan. I’d continue straight toward the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe this is better expressed on a map.

That’s route 66 as it is.

That’s the route I’d like to take.

Someday…

* I was so looking forward to linking you to the wikipedia page of Old Faithful, as I uploaded one of the pictures that Dad took onto the article, but they removed it. Boo :(

It says many things.

1) I am a nerd

That’s pretty much it actually. This is how I spend my Friday evenings.

Thanks to Steve for the font, and then guiding me through the install process.

For the (from my point of view) crummy posts of the last week-and-a-half.

We lost our debate last night :(. If I heard correctly, it was only by 20 pts, but I’m not certain. We did well, I mean, I can’t single out any one thing that cost us it.

One thing I did notice was that they brought up that AIB guy who stole 87 million or the murder of Shane Geoghegan, who was killed by gangland warfare in two of their speeches, claiming that this was anti-social behaviour (ASB).

We immediately came back and talked about how stealing money and murdering people is not anti-social behaviour. It’s crime.

It’s true. In the grand scheme of things, ASB is a relatively small crime. I mean, ASB is noise pollution, having a noisy house party, or littering. Not life-threatening, really.

But what the proposition did, or at least, how I likened it to, was them just putting there hands over their ears and shouting.

LALALALALA I can’t hear you LALALA murder LALALA bankers stealing millions LALALALALA

I don’t even think any of my speech was rebutted! I do not think they ever even said Tommy in their entire collective speeches. Not even a “despite what Tommy has told you”.

Anyway. Enough ranting.

**

Today is one of the few days I can actually say “I got to sleep in while my Mum went to school”. It’s true. I am currently sitting Indian-style on my bed, while my Mum is down in school. No, she’s not just finishing up science, which is where I would be at this time on a friday, she’s at..

Parent Teacher Meetings!

I have no school today!

**

My non chocolate resolve is still going strong. My best friend thinks I’m crazy, but I’m pretty sure she thought that long before I gave it up. :)

The question that everyone asks me is why??

For fun. There is no real reason. It’s not for losing weight, it’s not that I’m slowly making the transition to vegan, it’s not because my parents are forcing me or any of that claptrap. I’m interested to see what happens. Call it an experiment if you want. I want to see what cool side effects I have :)

Will I turn blue? Will I wake up one morning and be able to play Bach perfectly? Stay tuned :)

**

Finally, while we’re on the subject of new-year’s resolutions, this one is a bit late, but whatever.

I want to cut down on swearing. Casual swearing (my kind) is more subconscious then anything, but it’s just something I want to cut down on. Again, not parent influenced or anything like that, just something I want to do.

I is happy :)

I has no school tomorrow, or the day after that or the day after that!

Debate is on tonight! :)

Yeah, recent posts have been kind of crap, I’ll try and make it up tomorrow.

Til then, wish me luck tonight!

Klara recently held a competition giving away two books she’d funded out of her own pocket, cos she’s awesome.

I won first prize and scoooped!* a copy of Blood. Woo!

What you had to do was simply leave a comment stating why you wanted to win. I wrote:

I’d like to win cos that little snippet of manga you showed me on the train last Saturday reminded me how class manga is and how I need to start watching it again!

Congrats too to Thomas who also claimed a prize too.

* Oh. My. God. So. Many. Memories.

Original Linkie

January 26, 2009 – Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment have announced the start of principal production in Los Angeles on the 3D Motion Capture Film The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, Defiance) as Tintin, the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure, and Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace, Defiance) as the nefarious Red Rackham.

Bell and Craig are joined by an international cast that includes Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook.

There were rumours of a Tintin movie from about last year. In fact, I remember I had to draw myself away from reading one to do my first debate about alcoholism.

Despite many people thinking me a movie buff, I’ve never actually seen a 3D movie, so I can’t comment on that side of it. What really strikes me about this movie is the amount of famous actors in it.

Craig (Red Rackham) was in 007, obviously

Pegg and Frost (Thomson and Thompson) were in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I’m worried about them playing twins. They look too different!

Andy Serkis (Haddock) was of course in Lord of the Rings. Again, worried. Haddock is in his late 50s at least, and where’s the beard?

Mackenzie Crook was in Pirates of the Caribbean, who had a wooden eye and was part of the ‘comic relief duo’ with the short, fat one. Yer one on the left

I played drums in my double music class again. I’ve done it once before and the kit’s condition, er, hasn’t improved. For some reason, it wasn’t even set up. The 3rd tom was upside down!

I was playing along to the rest of the class. That old Irish tune, the one that goes:

Well I can’t help.. falling in love with you!

I started off with my best friend’s brush sticks on the excuse-for-a-snare-drum. The bottom of it was cracked just like the top of mine was back just before Christmas!

I then tried the African drum. Much better. :)

I promise never to say a bad word about my own drum kit ever again.