So, I've been following up with some of the tech things I've mentioned in past entries.

( Yes, this is a little geeky. )

Thanks to salith, I should be getting a pretty decently-specced PC custom-built and ready within the next two or three weeks; we decided on the parts a few days ago, and I gave him a cheque yesterday. It cost substantially less than I was expecting it to, having looked at prebuilt machines of comparable specification, and it should be pretty expandable as time goes on. The only thing we were unable to find on the site used was the live bay thing for the Audigy, but I could feasibly take it out of this machine. I'm planning to keep this one around as a spare, as it still works OK and everything; it's just not very powerful. Alternatively, I may get a KVM switch so I can run both machines as necessary, but I'll work this all out when I actually have the new PC.

Talking of PC stuff, I found a couple of useful sites for desktop backgrounds/wallpapers. I've had the most use from DesktopNexus, though 4scrape has some pretty neat stuff too.

As there's been some malware going around on Twitter lately, LongURL Mobile Expander is a pretty handy add-on that lets you see the full address for shortened URLs, in case of any doubt. I recall reading somewhere that people are substantially more likely to click links in a Twitter feed than in an email, despite such things not necessarily being any safer.

So, it's been a while since I last wrote, and I've got a few things to put up here. Unfortunately I've been feeling pretty down for the most part, though things have been better the last couple of days. Anyway, the first thing to mention is some good news: I scored 80% on the test on my photography course, which was a higher mark than I expected. I'm also doing quite well on the arts course, and had a tutorial by phone on Wednesday of last week; this was very helpful, and although it may be tricky to find time to do the work I need to do before the next tutorial on Monday, I'm more confident about the course as a whole. We also discussed the possibility of aiming for a diploma or a degree, and I think the former is certainly attainable; I need to either look online for a qualification to aim for or call up to get the Arts and Humanities Prospectus.

( There's some more good things to say as well. )

Finally, there's still the idea of going to Manchester at the weekend with gothicwhitewolf; however, for various reasons I won't go into (though not least among them, being behind with uni work) I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be able to go. The plan is for him to come here tomorrow evening and we'll stay in Sheffield overnight, and then go to Manchester earlyish on the Saturday, staying the night and returning on Sunday. I'm perfectly happy to spend time with him tomorrow, but it's the Saturday that I have some problems with. I'll talk it out and see if some solution can be reached, but I may end up just coming back home; he was going to go anyway, and stay the night, so it shouldn't be a great loss if I don't make it.

This evening the plan has suddenly transpired is to go see kitsunefury for a while. We're meeting in town and going back to his place -- I've not been before -- for however long. I really need to get back here tonight rather than staying over as I've quite a few things to do. For now I should get something to eat and take a shower, then maybe make a start on uni work.

First of all, most folks are probably aware of it already, but there was an earthquake at 1am Wednesday morning. It was disconcerting and weird, but we're all okay; I'm not sure if everything will be alright back home -- some things were in rather precarious positions -- but hopefully there should be no major damage, if any at all.

( More on the last few days, with (largely unrelated) video and pictures. )

All in all, things have been going pretty well, though the time's passed quickly. I was originally thinking to go back home on Monday, but it's looking like I may stay longer; still, unless I end up staying something like another 2 or 3 weeks, not all of the books I ordered will arrive before I go back home. I'll just get my folks to forward them to me; it wasn't until I arranged to get them sent here that I realised one of them wouldn't be available for 10-12 days.

We're considering going to see a film -- either Be Kind Rewind or possibly Cloverfield -- in the next couple of days, though as Neil's not very well, I don't know if that'll happen or not. Likewise I don't know if I'll be seeing any of the friends that live locally, though there will be more opportunity if I stay longer, of course. I'm in no rush to go back, as I'm having an enjoyable break, but I need to go home sooner or later; I miss it already, a little.

Via conduit_cat, the LJ Markov Random Text Generator outputs some amusing stuff; after a few iterations and copy-pasting the best bits together, it came up with this:

While I was with my mother and stepfather -- I suspect there's little that can be done for me. We also managed to get comfortable with this; normally I feel a certain degree of hostility toward rules and perhaps even enjoy ambiguity.

It's virtually impossible to extract an individual track without having some bizarre dream where surrealism is a matter of trial and error. Now I'm going to try new activities, travel to foreign lands, and experience different things. I find helping other people genuinely rewarding and that people should make their own decisions without pressure from anybody else -- I vaguely mentioned this in a bit, I was very comfortable with this, and now have a better answer.

Now I've found the army book, and will deliberate on all the Elven armies; very useful, and inexpensive. I bought it purely to make sure that it was about time for an unlocked post.

And, thanks to kesh, my Xbox 360 now has a blog, if for some dark purpose you want to read about what I've been playing in more detail than my GamerCard (on my newly-updated profile) shows; yes, it's occasionally inaccurate, and yes, that's a picture of Silver the Hedgehog I have as my current icon -- the only redeeming feature of Sonic 360.

I did have more stuff I wanted to write about, but Firefox crashed and decided to lose all the tabs I had open, and thus I've forgotten half of it. Oh well. Here are some wolves to make up for it.

I went to bed early last night, somewhat unintentionally (I'd intended to just lie down for a short while, as my back was hurting) and thus woke up a little after eight this morning. I'd originally planned to take it easy today and not do much, but after playing a bit of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (good game, pretty scary too, just has some controller-smashingly frustrating parts), I decided to head into town.

I had a missed delivery to pick up, which turned out to be a replacement power cord for my Xbox. I'd had letters from them saying that some tiny percentage of consoles had a problem with the power cord causing some kind of fiery doom, but I didn't get round to applying for one - turns out they just decided to send it anyway as their records showed my machine could have been affected. Weirdly, the cord has a fucking instruction manual with it, in 12 different languages no less.

Got some money out of my account and paid bills, then dropped off my prescription and headed on the usual tour of the shops. Nothing too exciting at Fopp, barring a great Susumu Yokota/Rothko collaboration, a couple of dirt-cheap movies and a DFA Records mix CD with LCD Soundsystem's Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Mix) on it, which I can't get out of my head. Hasn't been all that much new music I've liked lately, but that may be because I've never heard of half the stuff I see.

Next stop was the game store for Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse (despite the first game never having been released over here, though details may be on the bonus DVD that comes with the game; more on it later). There wasn't anything else worth looking at, really... there's been a lot of releases for the runup to Xmas, and I'm anticipating more, but the signal to noise ratio isn't great by any means.

Managed to browse GW without anything more than vaguely wanting one or two things. I should try and sell some of the stuff I've got from there and don't have a use for anymore. After that, I only had to buy a small amount of food, as I still had a lot in stock from before I went away.

Didn't have time to do very much when I got back home, as I had to go out to class. I unpacked, sorted everything out, and had something to eat. I began to feel very unwell though, with a severe headache and nausea forcing me to lie down in the dark for a while. I then realized that I'd have to leave for class if I was going to make it, and I fought against myself to get there, reasoning that I didn't want to miss it two weeks in a row, and that the benefit of improved mental well-being gained from going would outweigh the drawback of feeling bad physically.

Indeed it was very much worth going, if not for the class itself then certainly for the interactions with people there; I was able to be more sociable than usual and was actually able to help some other students by recounting what I knew. I also decided to further my study of Tibetan Buddhism, my area of particular interest, by getting Lama Anagarika Govinda's books Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism (which I'd loaned from the library previously, and found extremely interesting) and The Way of the White Clouds, a story of the author's pilgrimage through Tibet before the Chinese occupation. I was going to get a book out from the library too, but I figured I had enough already; maybe next time, as there were a few that caught my eye.

The class and meditations went well, the latter a bit better than usual -- although I got distracted near the end -- and I headed home in good spirits. Played a little more Cthulhu, and started on Xenosaga; I was wowed, and in the short time I played, I couldn't help but love it. I think this one is going to be really good... if nothing else, it fulfils my love of RPG's, big mecha, and incomprehensibly complex storylines rich in symbolism, at least some of the above being reasons why I want to go see Inosensu: Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) soon.

I think what I need to do now, however, is take a quick shower, and go to bed, and hope tomorrow is another good day. Maybe I'll finish that track I was working on.