It's hard to believe that the shortest day of the year has already passed. I always say I'm going to do something pagan to mark a solstice, but I always forget or can't be bothered. Mind you, I've always been worried that were I to dress up in a big white robe with a pointy white hat and start dancing around a fire, things would go very badly ( Read more... )

The past two days have largely passed in a fog of whisky and mathematics. I've discovered a website called The Khan Academy, which is a non-profit educational website and organisation aimed at providing free educational material (both fundamental and quite advanced) to anyone who wants it by means of video tutorials and continuous testing. It's ( Read more... )

Ah, a well-spent afternoon. A countryside walk in the brisk winter air, returning home just in time for twilight (notice the lower case here - punchable sparkly vampires are not what I'm talking about), and settling down with a generous measure of Islay whisky. This is what it means to take it easy. Part of me wants to spend several days this ( Read more... )

In late September of last year I grabbed an opportunity to break out of the rut I was stuck in by signing up for another Master's degree in a subject I'd idolised as a little little kid, but had been told I had no hope of studying as a teenager of GCSE-taking age. I am of course talking about computer science. I remember how in the first few ( Read more... )

OK, I did promise a catchup in the next entry, but that isn't going to happen. So like Microsoft, I'm just going to push the expected date forward and forward until I say "It will happen at some point in the future that isn't now ( Read more... )

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It's been an awful long time since I last posted an entry, so I'll do a catch-up special right now, though sadly it won't be as long as I'd like it to be.

Recently I finished reading 紅樓夢 (Dream Of Red Mansions, Dream Of The Red Chamber, Story Of The Stone), a tremendously long Chinese novel that is considered the greatest masterpiece of fiction ( Read more... )

Hah! Adorable. I'm watching a video of a Japanese woman attempting to use English for the first time with real Americans. She looks so much like myself: the deer-caught-in-headlights eyes, the "Oh god, all my practise is for naught" expression, the hesitation, the running away screaming, the curses of embarrassment. I feel very sorry for her, ( Read more... )

Oh no! In a typical bout of bad luck, I had fallen ill during the exam period and had been forced to take the missed tests in mid-August. ...Or so I thought. I received an email on Monday saying that in fact my exams are going to be next week. I've pulled the emergency brake on everything else and put myself into emergency revision mode. Or so ( Read more... )

I got the shock of my life earlier today. I was clicking and clacking away at my laptop trying to get the malfunctioning internet connection to work when suddenly I heard 「私たちはここにいる！」 (We are here!) being yelled loudly by a Japanese female voice right outside my window. In my colossal shock I hurled the laptop a good five inches into the air, ( Read more... )