My Poor Dinosaur...

Of all the places to land on a cactus.

Or crash into a bird.

(Do you only crash into birds at night?)

This is from Google Chrome's offline game, where your dinosaur will be shocked because it's suddenly levitating:

Press up or space to begin the jumpfest, and eat some cactus while you're at it:

You can press down to duck too (this isn't necessary) and eat more cactus.

This isn't necessary either.

Dear World

Dear World,

You are wrong about everything.

Bloody amatonormativity.

Yours,

Enby blowing off steam.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!!!

Finally!

Now, back to advert talk. Ever wonder if ads are trying to determine your future?

Like, seriously?

Ever wonder if they're speaking to someone completely different?

Or just someone with different responsibilities?

...I don't think I know who I am any more.

The Twilight of Our Literacy, Part 1: Intro, Opening, Preface

General Warning: If there are any Twilight fans reading this, this may not be for you. This involves a lot of hate towards that book (and saga) you love. I would hope that anyone reading this had the maturity to accept that others have different views and maybe listen in and come out thinking the other person might have a point, but seeing as I'm not that mature most of the time I can't really expect it of my readers.

Now that the Twi-Hards are all gone, hello and welcome to Minim's reading of that sparkle-vampire book that got big a few years ago and gained lots of popularity with teenage girls, such as the girl from one of my classes who said I couldn't be a vampire because I wasn't sparkling. (Well, first, Meyer-vires don't sparkle except in direct sunlight, and we were in a classroom. Second, I'd not even read Twilight because romantic fiction has never appealed to me and so all the vampires I knew about didn't sparkle. They just lost their powers in daylight. And yes, I do call myself a vampire sometimes. I have my reasons)

I got hooked into the hatedom about a year ago when I discovered a reading of it. I will happily spend hours upon hours reading blogs about how Twilight sucks. And my current flatmate and mother ('current mother'? I didn't know I could pick and choose, not that I would), knowing this, recently picked up something from a charity shop. (If you can't guess what that is from what all I've said so far, it has words such as 'twilight' and 'STEPHENIE MEYER' on the front page. Just a hint *wink wink nudge nudge*)

The dedication is to Meyer's big sister. Apparently Twilight would still be unfinished without her enthusiasm. She acknowledges lots of other people on the next page, and then the contents. We've still got the 'preface,' 24 chapters and an epilogue to go. Who's excited?

Opening quote! But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2:17). Forbidden fruit metaphor, tying in with the apple on the cover. Are we going to see any forbidden fruit? I doubt it.

Onto the 'preface' now - I call it a 'preface' because it's not. Prefaces are authorial chatter about the book. These five paragraphs are more of a prologue - they're fiction. It's first person from our protagonist, Bella Swan. (I shouldn't know this yet, but it is). She's facing a 'hunter' who is about to kill her.

Now, look at these phrases:

[H]e looked pleasantly back at me.

The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.

Least. Threatening. Villain. Ever. Seriously, this guy's about to kill you, but no, he's all friendly and pleasant. "Hello, I'm your friendly neighbourhood vampire, and I'm here to suck you dry of blood if you don't mind, of course,"

Another issue is this: 'Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.' Oh yes, tell us how great you are, why don't you. Bella's telling me that her death will be oh-so-noble because she's doing it for someone else makes me think that it's not a completely selfless act - that she wants to be thought of as noble and all that. Or that she's quite big-headed. It doesn't give such a big weight as sacrifices tend to in many other books and stories.

Welcome to Twilight.

Havin' a Glitch Time...

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year and so I've been writing in all the places I shouldn't have been. I am well on top of my word count though, as this screenshot attests to:

I think this document is trying to become a TARDIS.

A Conversation I Had

Scene: Minim is walking with a Maths-mate after Algebra II, which was okay-ish. The sun is out.

Minim: It's rather hot, isn't it?

Maths-mate: Yeah, that's unusual.

Minim: I don't do heat.

*beat*

Minim: I don't read magazines.

In The Cold

It's 12:45, Tuesday 6th January in this advert:

And that weather symbol isn't clear on this picture I've taken, but there's definitely some sort of cloud in it, and it looks like the sun is peeping out behind it. Not that I need my phone to tell me the weather when I can look out of the window. (And it doesn't look like snow or ice or anything like that either. It doesn't look like winter typically does in all the media that's chucked down our throat. Surely the point of a winter advert is that it's supposed to be, you know, winter-y?)

Those phone backgrounds look good too. I rather like the background on my own phone - a load of colourful round things - but those are just as neat. It's a good idea to have a background you like - although anyone can just take a photo and use that if they wish. I took this photo on my phone, I could always use it.

"in store | online | mobile" sounds good too - it gives you a variety of options to deal with the company if you have a preferred method of communication, or you can't use a certain method of communication. I guess that means it's good, yeah?

What am I missing?

Oh yeah.

What the hell is that fucking massive ice block doing in the middle of everything?! It's not telling me 'winter.' Snow and cold wind and festivity tell me it's winter (although on the festivity front it is a good idea maybe not to oversell on it after Christmas, I suppose). What this is telling me is that somebody's got a fucking massive freezer. (That or these guys have gone to the Arctic or Antarctic - or used Photoshop) Massive ice blocks just have that big WTF factor and they really don't help sell your product. I'm not impressed or joyed over one. It just makes me feel like I'm in that massive freezer with it.

And I still noticed the time on the phones first...

Five Little Notes

1: If you're draining rice, make sure not to get all of it in the sink. That would just be a disaster.

2: Corned beef tins should always come with a key. No excuses. (and stick a spare one on top just in case the other one falls off. We don't all have pliers, you know!)

3: Some people get anxious over having exams. Others completely ignore that and get nervous about the bit in between arriving at the building and entering the exam hall.

4: The Calculus should be easier than the Probability was. (I am referring to exams, of course)

5: I get a lot of email telling me what's popular in my network. I pay very little attention to it.

They Know Who I Am

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Inner-Minim: You scream like a boy.

This one's going to take time to get used to. It's catching my attention more than the orange blinky light telling me that my battery is definitely beyond hope now if it wasn't before (although it probably was)

*Click*

Yes, Chrome, that's exactly right, I am a dark blue figure with no neck, no limbs, and am encased in a bubble. I think that last one's true enough, actually. But still, imagine if I were!

I love you, Google. Really, I do. And I'm not just saying this because of your email, your blogging platform, your browser, your maps on my phone, and your search engine, all of which I get a useful use out of. I have to love you, or you'd reveal the things I've been Googling in you. ;) (I guess the most embarrassing thing would be people finding out that my body is reminding me that it's female - oh shit, I've just leaked it. And for those of you shrieking "TMI!" or "Ew!" through your monitor screens, you really need to consider that this approach is unlikely to work. You need to shriek through your microphone, like you're recording over the loudest sounds ever. And then save it and promptly forget about it until one day you're looking through your massive system of folders and then you listen over it again in several months and are just left thinking "WTF?!")

(Also, name it "the-cake-is-a-lie<file system code bit like .png for images or .docx for Word Documents even though I barely ever use those anyway).

(I don't even know what I'm talking about any more)

Yes Google, I do love you, but I do feel that it's a little bit odd that you are determined to make sure I know my name no matter where I browse. I mean, I know my name. This isn't really an essential feature.

All I'm saying is, a more useful feature would be "How to become a pirate ninja."

Anyone want some words?

They're free, you know, and you can use them as many times as you like, so long as you can remember them.

I'd like a few words to put onto this page right now. Maybe I need a word collection book thing to give me a good supply of them.

Sometimes, it's hard to know what word is appropriate to use in a certain context. Other times you know what word your friend needs to put in their sentence, but they don't.

Let the predominance of words always be remembered by us, I say, using such things to communicate this idea as effectively as I can. Even numbers are just special words with special properties attached to them.

After all, words are things which we take for granted.

Happy 2015!

It is now 2015 and so a new year. So, happy new year!

Now, go eat some cake.

Late

It's still Thursday in some parts of the world.

I'm just saying.

*Minim with a busy/lazy face on*

I'll leave it for you to decide which of the two cases it is.

*angelic*

A Little Failure

Starting Sixth Form College was a new experience. Hardly anyone in my classes had known me before, my classes were half an hour longer (Now lectures have reverted to 50 minutes, for which I am thankful!) and I could barely recognize many of my old classmates because they were wearing completely different headscarves.

Classes were going well. In Further Maths, we tackled C1 (Or, what I call, Enhanced GCSE), the splendidocious C2, and the devillish D1. In Physics, we looked at things you can't really see with the naked eye, or even eyes with glasses on. English Language was, of course, very language-y and we were building up to the coursework element of the course. And then there was Critical Thinking, where we had to think.

This being Sixth Form, from the first minute on we were being prepared for exams. Going through work on the syllabus, doing mock exams, and so forth. The Mocks passed and, boringly, I got As and a Physical B.

The solution to this was simple: work on Physics a bit more, and all else could happily take the hit. The January season of exams rode into play, and it was all exam rooms and revision and the after-exam questions of "What did you get for Question 4?" (The answer to this question is is "Either a correct or incorrect answer,"). I walked out of D1 thinking that I had royally screwed up the final question, the most significant question on that paper. I walked out of Physics unsure. My other papers I walked out on feeling fairly confident. 

Cue six weeks time for results day, giving the examiners time to read the scrawls of plenty of silly students. I could hardly wait to log in to the student network and find my results.

I wanted to hide in my room until the end of Time (and it hadn't even started yet). Or until I became a zombie and so didn't care any more.

I forced myself out of my room and down the stairs. Moth was there, wanting to know how I did. I said I got As. I couldn't force the rest of the words out that the last exam had gone really really very quite badly.

The words loosened a little bit as I took the twenty minute walk to college. I kept on telling myself that I had to face up to it. I still had solitude when I arrived at English, my first class of the day. However, it soon became a babble of excited students going "What did you get?" "How did you do?" and feeling proud of their Bs and Cs. I held back tears as I bluntly told the others about the 4 As and the other one.

Reactions generally went along the lines of "WTF happened there?!" Gradually over the day the upset cleared and my normal state of emotional indifference returned.

Walking to Critical Thinking that day was tough. I was very reluctant to go, but I told myself I had to. At the beginning of the class everyone was talking about their results. Even the teacher was perplexed at my result.

Normal life soon pervaded. The deadline for paying for resits was about a week afterwards. I went up to the Finance desk while the area was not very full. The lady on the desk recognised me as my mother's daughter - Moth being a member of staff there at the time. And because of that, I ended up going to speak to another lady at a different desk and having to wait in the now growing queue for the finance office. So I could get a £1.10 discount which promptly went towards a bottle of Sprite in the shop.

I accepted it all, got obsessed with the xkcd Time (which had started not long afterwards), and prepared for the resit and the other Critical Thinking exam with vigilance, going to extra sessions and so on. I made sure to ensure I was prepared for the other exam or I'd have to resit that in a year's time due to the abolishing of the January exams. I tackled those papers with determination.

The resit relented a C. The other paper - which was on arguing - didn't argue and handed away an A.

Hello Readers

Hey readers,

I know you're out there. I can tell. I see your views, the returners and the first-timers, and all that jazz. A few of you have contacted me about the blog through forums. (Note that this is not optimal and that you really should use the comments section. There's a button under the title of each post. Note that this does not apply to Moth, who is special and also my mother. <3) I know you're listening and I quite like it.

I know last Thursday's update didn't happen. If anyone was disappointed then I apologise wholeheartedly. (I don't know y'all well enough to say whether any of you were disappointed. Maybe we could chat sometime? ;) ) Feeling grotty gets in the way of things, you know? But, this is just another weblog. There's a sea of them out there.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would pick to read this little corner of the internet when there's a vast array of better-written, better focused, more popular blogs out there. I guess I must be doing something right. You're all awesome for reading this clutter of randomness, anyway.

Words are powerful in the right hands, and also in the wrong ones. That is a redundant way of saying that words are powerful. Lots of people seem to have picked up on that. Words are more powerful the more they're heard. Words can spread too, and I guess that means we all ought to be careful if we don't want to abuse the power these words can give us.

I don't know why I'm writing to you all, but I do know that you are all awesome people. Took me years to believe that I'm just as awesome as you are now, but that's how life operates sometimes. Love yourself, but don't be afraid to change yourself either.

We are living in an age where people are able to communicate almost instantly to people on the opposite side of the planet. Yesterday, a spacecraft landed on a comet for the first time in forever, enabling us to learn more about the universe that we live in. (And then the scientists had a big party to celebrate, but the rest of us didn't aid the mission and so weren't invited. And so it should be - they did good, the rest of us just observed, if that). And that is just brilliant and fabulous and awesome.

Guys, everything is awesome.

(Hands up everyone who has now got 'Everything Is Awesome' stuck in their head)

A Quick Lecture Run-Down

Before I came to university, I had a notion that lectures were going to be awkward to get through. You'd have to take notes all the time while following the lecturer and I thought it would be impossible to keep up at all.

My mind was as wrong as your everyday internet troll. It hadn't even taken into account the existence of whiteboards - it only thought about projector screens which didn't have anything on them to aid understanding, and having to write all the undecipherable equations down, making it difficult to listen. (And in fairness to past me, my ears do tend to turn off when I'm copying off of the whiteboard, but whiteboard writing stays up longer and needs rubbing off sometimes. And I can actually understand what I'm writing too)

Real lectures are hardly like that at all. In fact, plenty of lecturers just hand you the flipping notes. You just have to keep up with what's going on and maybe annotate bits of information as you go through it all. Maybe you'll end up going right back to the beginning and learn where techniques come from in the first place, maybe you're picking up on all this new stuff with new symbols and methods, or maybe your lecturer will try and bribe a graph of x² (with money) to give a value for x where y = -1 to demonstrate that there is no real answer for it. It's good to have a sense of humor when half of what you're covering is known by half the lecture hall.

Even the more 'note'-worthy lecturers are pretty cool. (And I have noted that pun as one of the worst puns I have ever made up. I apologize for this and the notation around the word 'note'. A Minim sure likes a pun about 'notes.' It's terrible) And at least one of them puts all of his notes online where you can find them. Taking notes is a good thing that you can do with your hands, and copying stuff can be a good way to learn things, too. Maybe you're revisiting the definition of an angle (proper angles work in radians here, because if you draw a circle of radius 1 around the point, the angle between the two lines would just be the length of the arc between them). Maybe you're playing around with new terms.

Of course, the most on-hands module has the most on-hands approach, with the lectures just being used to tackle some of the most common problems that people were coming up with, while much of the learning is done by going through and doing stuff and just simply asking about it. Maybe simply asking about things isn't in a Minim's nature, but doing the work and using the resources available is, and so this means that a Minim is very satisfied.

Notation

There is something that is bugging me about notation in Maths.

You see, these are all fine:

But I really don't get this:

Maybe integers made the mathematicians sleep?

Getting Lost

One of the most important items I carry around with me is my phone.

See, before all the university stuff happened, I was pretty happy with my phone. By then, it was just an old pink lump of metal that worked as an alarm clock, and worked at texting mostly, but that's all I needed. I didn't care that everyone else was playing flappy birds or quizzes or what-have-you, because I was enjoying my life by then and didn't feel the need.

Now, though, I'm glad to have a smartphone. A shiny black one. So sorry old phone, but you're fired.

Old Phone: You fired me?!
Minim: Yes.
Old Phone: But whyyyyyy??? *sadface*
Minim: You don't have a face for it to be sad.
Minim: And this new smartphone does more and is a harder worker.
Old Phone: How long did it take you to choose that pillock? I bet it was absolutely ages...
Minim: Less than it took the guys in the Apprentice to choose cheese.
Minim: I just went for what the guy in the shop recommended.
Old Phone: Oh yeah?!
Minim: Yeah.
Old Phone: And what does that old lump of black metal do that I can't?
Minim: Nags me when I've got email.
Old Phone: You have a computer.
Minim: Has a browser.
Old Phone: You have a computer.
Minim: Has Google Maps.
Old Phone: You have a computer.
Minim: I can move the map with the touchscreen and can use it when my frankly awful sense of direction completely fails me.
Old Phone: You're no good with maps anyway.
Minim: Shows me where I am, too, so I can work out which way to go by moving about.
Old Phone: *speechless*

It is so easy to get lost in a new town (did it on the way to the shops twice, even having gone there twice from my halls of residence not getting the route to sink in!) My phone is often the hero in such situations because of its maps. Yes, I know that computer maps are definitely not perfect, but they are pretty functional for use and I know where to aim myself to get back into known territory. I've had more problems with looking where to go prior to going, and that has happened twice - each time due to my misinterpretations.

I've got a good handle on where I need to be, anyway, and most of the shops I may use. (still have no handle on certain places I need like the post office but apart from that...) I like it.

I've Got It

The one thing I hate in a lecture is whispering around me. It's annoying and distracting and makes me want to bite people's heads off because I actually want to focus (and especially when the lecturer has a soft voice) and I'm getting burst out of the concentration bubble every five seconds.

The one thing I love in a lecture is a lecturer who occasionally makes a funny comment. Or being around people (mainly guys) who don't really whisper at all. Or finding out something interesting and new.

The one thing I love about my timetable is that it's got lots of maths on it. And that Wednesday afternoon is very much clear.

The one thing I hate about my timetable is that my earliest starts (same time Monday and Friday) are both further away than my regular lecture hall. And that Fridays are my busiest day with all lectures being in different halls (not to mention tutorial).

The one thing I love about independent living is the ability to eat a bacon butty whenever I feel like it.

The one thing I hate about independent living is my non-ability to get things done. Or having to carry shopping up three flights of stairs (and making my arm hurt wildly in the process).

Uni!

It's the first proper week of Uni and doing Maths and stuff, and already I'm learning stuff:

1. Always be ready for the Fire Alarm to go off.

This means, keep your shoes on except in bed, and make sure to have some sort of jacket easy to hand at night. Keys and glasses can go in its pockets.

2. Lectures are easier to follow if you sit at the front.

If you're near the back, people will be whispering and they will be glued to their phones too. Which is seriously distracting and makes it difficult to follow.

3. When in doubt, the name's Hannah.

No, seriously, across all of the first year Maths students, you've got about a 10% prevalence of the name Hannah among the girls. (It's a lovely name, mind you.)

4. Most people are just nice people who would like to get along with you.

Seriously, most people are happy to chat and be friendly and they do like to see that you're happy. Nobody minds if you quickly ask them something or whatever.

5. What I do is completely within my own hands.

I could stay in my room all day. Or I could go out every night. I could skip all my lectures - no-one's taking track. But lectures are awesome so I intend to go to all of them cos they're just so cool.

Most of this uni stuff is brilliant even if there are a few downsides. I'm just hoping I never forget my key. That would be £10 and I really don't want to lose that amount for a sheer moment of forgetfulness.

Fluffy!

I have a squishy cushion and it's so fluffy I'm gonna die! Or at least get tickled a lot.

I have a cough and cold and it should go die in a fire - only not with me still attached. That would be a bit painful. I considered ripping my lungs out, but I decided that the risks just weighed over the benefits.

All of the diseases should go and die in all the fires.

University life is pretty interesting at the moment - finding your way around, meeting people, eating apples (because when a flatemate arrives with bags and bags of apples he doesn't know what to do with you get some of your own - although I didn't know he had them until after the event)

#zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz