It's a Colony recap! Previous chapters. Wow, this one ended up looooong.

Chapter 8, in which David has some growing up to do.

Yay, this chapter's back on Island One! I am growing really really fond of Evelyn and David. Maybe it's just because I've seen more of them than a few pages of introduction, but I just... like them. I really enjoy their interaction in this chapter, too.

I don't remember if David's age is ever stated, but even if he's an adult, he's pretty much got the mind of a teenager, in my opinion. This is his puberty chapter.

It starts with them at the holo!ballet.

( Yes, the holo!ballet. )

And with that, we get to the end of Book One (of five). Pray to the gods of the five-act structure that now things will begin to happen. Prediction: David and Evelyn team up to save the world.


Sometimes reading books, you think about whether they would make good films or not. I think Colony would make a neat anime. I'm not sure why it makes me think of that rather than live-action, maybe it's the politics and the great silliness.

Also, I'm still hoping for a Colony Drop (TV Tropes, click at your own risk.).

THREE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS, GUYS! Are you excited? I'm excited. I like Christmas. :3


And now, an entry:

FFFFFFF, how long has it been since I last posted? I didn't intend to take a three-week break, I just never got around to writing an entry. ¬_¬ (Though I have been twittering it up as much as ever.) I haven't done that much, to be honest:

I took the JLPT!

It was pretty easy, to be honest; there was only one or two questions I wasn't sure on. (Damn you, particles.) Results come out in March, I think.

I also got the references in for my MA application! I got an email last week that it had been passed on to the appropriate course coordinator and that I'll hear from them again in the new year. They'll probably ask me to an interview, too. Ah, so much waiting, I want to know nowwww whether I get to go.


Now that those two things are done, though, I'm really being worn down by not having anything to do — I'm so easy to irritate sometimes, it's really pretty ridiculous. I'm going to try to get more work next year, also enrol in a Japanese course to prepare for the next level of the JLPT, maybe start practising my violin again, and keep working through the Ruby on Rails textbook... you know, all those things I resolved to do when I left Durham. I might do a New Years Resolution post sometime, so they're written out and I have to stick to them.

Also, I'm trying to draw every day. It's not going perfectly, as you can see, but at least I'm drawing a bit, even if it's only doodles. These are pretty bad, dirty scans, but I'm too tired to fix them right now.

( Draws )

If I don't do art posts on a semi-regular basis from now on, someone shout at me about it. Next time: maybe an actual nice, finished drawing. :O Shocking.

I also have some Colony recaps, gonna post the first when I finish this post. \o/


And now I'm going to bed and reading about ancient gas warfare. Tim got me a subscription to Current World Archaeology for Christmas; it's making my life right now. :D

I sent off my MA application to UCL today! :D Oh man, I feel amazing. It's finally done! I'm also pretty confident about the JLPT on Sunday, so basically I am just relaxing all over the place today. :D

Ok, there's still other stuff I need to do, but today I am relaxing all over the place.


I also did some scanning! This is a bit depressing, because it's pretty much a month and a half's worth of drawings. T_T I want to draw more and practice more, really.

The first one of these is a bit NSFW.
( Let me dump some art on you. )

I have 15, and no-one ot give them to. Here's a video thing that explains what you can do with Google Wave:


I think it'll be pretty cool once more people use it. I'll screen comments, so if you want an invite just comment with your email and I'll put you on the list.


I have not accomplished my week goals, because I've been busy coughing my lungs out. I feel a bit better today, but then I also felt a bit better on Thursday, and still spent all Friday in bed watching Life, so... *shrug*


PS: If you are some anonymous person, I'm not going to give you an invite unless absolutely no-one else wants one. I don't know if you're a spammer or whatnot, and also I'd prefer to give my invites to people I actually know, at least a bit, and can potentially use Wave with. Nothing personal. You can always introduce yourself in an email or something!

Technically I'm meant to be studying Japanese right now, but I want to read more Colony, which means I have to write more about Colony or I'll get too far ahead. (I should just write about each chapter as I read it, really. But some of them are only 4 pages long, so I can read about a million in one stretch.)

( Chapter 6, in which we are imprisoned in the home of the evil Sheik, oh noes! )

( Chapter 7, in which you are a white-ass dude )

I am actually quite excited about all these bits of plot that keep being set up, but I really hope this is the last one. I'm ready for them to get started moving and actually happening now, ok?


PS: Spellcheck keeps asking me if al-Hashimi shouldn't be "sashimi".

THINGS I WILL DO THIS WEEK:

1. Send off my MA application.
2. Finish that now embarrassingly ancient entry about the "native British" already ffs.
3. Get my laptop to a repair shop.
4. …That's all I can think of, actually. Neat. (Apart from general drawing and studying Japanese and stuff, obviously.)

I shall report back on Friday.

Guys. I tidied and rearranged my bookshelf a few days ago (I was procrastinating), and I have a ton more vintage sci-fi and fantasy books hanging around waiting to be read. I think I should make this a ~series~. What do you guys think of Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny next? With a cover like this it's got to be good, right?

( Previously... )


( Chapter 4, in which we meet the World Government )


( Chapter 5, in which Evelyn gets hit on a lot )

I've read the next few chapters, as well, but I'm too lazy to write more right now, so I'ma save it until the weekend.

Charlie Brooker and Yahtzee should make out.

Anyway.

I was going to write about Colony yesterday, but making tea turned into having dinner, which turned into watching TV with my parents and then Warehouse 13 was on and the The Mummy Returns right afterwards, and then I went to bed.

And now I have at least three blogposts in my head that should be set free onto the rolling hills and pastures of the internet (and a million comments to reply to, where "a million" = ca. 6), but I am so very tired even though it's only 11, what's up with that, but nonetheless, SO TIRED, so I think I'm gonna go to bed and then blog my face off when I wake up.

It's a plan.


PS: I read pretty neat Star Trek fic today. You should probably read it if you think you would appreciate AU Star Trek slash based on the new film. It has vampires in it?

[I wrote half of this last night, hence it is a little rambly. But it does have subheadings! 8D]

I miss the times when I'd go to see a film at least twice, with different friends or whatever, and I'd always bring a notebook to the multiple viewings and take notes and write down quotes to use in my LJ review. I think I should start taking notes and writing about TV shows again, too. It’s fun.


2012
I went to see 2012 last weekend. It was pretty cool if you like seeing things fall apart in grandiose and dramatic ways, and I really, really like that. Especially the Earthquake stuff when the ground moves in waves like water; that is so badass.

( Mild Spoilers )

ANYWAY. It was a very pretty film. it suffers from that thing that films sometimes have where all the side characters are more interesting than the main ones, but if you're like me you'll spend most of your time enjoying the destruction and fantasising about what you’d do in an apocalypse, anyway, so that's alright.


Doctor Who
( Spoilers for the latest Who thing )


Tin Man
The first half of a film (mini series? idk.) called Tin Man (which I'd heard about. On Fandom Secrets. XD) was on the SciFi channel last night. It's pretty good! Much like Alice in Wonderland, my only knowledge of The Wizard of Oz comes from pop-culture osmosis, so I may be missing the odd reference, but it's fun in any case. Not super amazing, or anything, but fun.


ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ
When Tim came over this weekend, he brought a box set of Planetes with him, and we watched it, and I totally thought we had run out, but it turns out that box set was only half of the series, and we're going to watch the other half next weekend. This makes my life a small but statistically significant amount more amazing.


Twilight
My mum is suddenly really into the Twilight film, and she really wants me to watch it, too, and I really just have no desire to. I clawed my way through the book, I know what happens, I just don't feel like bringing up the energy to give this a chance. Ok, no, I do sort of want to watch it with Steph and an intoxicating substance of some kind (by which I mean caffeine, because I couldn’t stay awake through a movie if I had alcohol), but that’s a different matter altogether.


I think that's all I had to write about. Now I shall make some tea and write about the next few chapters of Colony. Mustn't let my reading get too far ahead of my writing.

I had a lesson with the tiny Germans today. We made spiders! 8D


Mine had three eyes, but one fell off.

Tiny boy-German made a spider that was a cowboy first (it had a lasso), and then turned into a princess ('cause he made it a crown). Yeah, tiny boy-German is pretty awesome.


I got my test voucher for the JLPT yesterday! Much excitement. :3 I think I'll do one of my past papers tomorrow. Things I will also do tomorrow:

- Go to the post office
- Edit my personal statement
- Finish colouring robot commission
- Find a cobbler who will fix the zipper on my boots

Awesome!


I've read the first three chapters of Colony now. ( A vague summary of stuff that's happened. )

I finished the book I was reading yesterday, and picked a new one from my to-read shelf:


Colony, by Ben Bova, first published 1979. "It is the year A.D. 2008; world population has steadily grown above 7-billion."

I'm gonna have so much fun with this. Choice quote from the first page:

Grasping her wrist firmly, he helped pull her up along the climbing path. "It gets easier up ahead. The gravity slackens off. And the view is worth the effort."

She nodded, but said to herself, He knows he's handsome. Good muscular body; firm backside. That's why they picked him to guide me, no doubt. He gets all the female hormones popping.

He gets all the female hormones popping, guys. I can't wait until the mandatory aloof, calculating, genius-scientist character shows up.

Oh hey, it's that time again, the time where the World Service talks about deaths in childbirth and how they haven't really gone down in the last 20 years. The time where I sit here absolutely incredulous and so very thankful for the healthcare and scientific progress in my life.

I learned what an obstetric fistula is from this series last week, and I am still not over it. There's people who live with them for 40 years or more. Years! Words nor emoticons can properly express my horror.

Just another reason "let's all go be hunter-gatherers now yaaaay" at the end of BSG was a really stupid decision.

Look guys, I got my staff badge at school today. \o/ Now I don't look like an impostor sitting in the staffroom being all... young. And stuff. The lesson today went pretty well, though no-one did their homework. -_- I've assigned them something they have to read out loud in front of the class next week in revenge.

Oh hey, it's November now, I guess I should start revising for the JLPT in earnest. get out those past papers I bought and stuff. I also haven't gotten any confirmation from SOAS at all that they got my application for the test, I think I'll call them about it tomorrow. It's still a month until the actual test, but I did send the application ages ago.

At the moment, I am constructing my Christmas list. I really want one of these flannel shirts. ♥ I want to buy a least half of everything Uniqlo sell. UniqLo? UniQlo? UNIQLO?


In other news, I've been watching a cool documentary, called Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo. Rageh Omaar, who is a journalist, I think? Goes around investigating the evidence behind the claim that intelligence is linked to race, going over the flaws in IQ tests, whether race is even a valid biological/genetic factor (not really, big surprise), and so on. The conclusion (SPOILERS! You should go watch it yourself unless you're not in the UK and Channel 4 won't let you) is something pretty cool that I'd never heard about before - since I know little about IQ tests - which is that the IQ test measures a certain kind of conceptual thinking that has been developing as we've adapted to modernity. Someone in the 1900s, for example, would score pretty badly by our current standards*. So, taking that into account, obviously the average score from sub-Saharan Africa would be lower than that from the USA or... I think North East Asia was the term they used.

It was a pretty excellent documentary, which thoroughly confirmed me in all my previous conclusions and offered me even more evidence to back them up with, allowing me to be continue being a smug git until the end of time. (It was quite balanced and objective in tone, though, while still acknowledging how personal and loaded the issue was, which I liked.)

* Also, it is massively biased towards the educated middle class. The one he took asked what an imaginary number was. How is that intelligence as opposed to knowledge?

The exhibition was pretty cool! Many pretty things. I love Aztec Mexica writing so much. This was probably my favourite thing, but I can't find a proper picture of it online. I'm amused that the guy on the left is named "leg". Friday at 3pm was the wrong time to go, though; it was massively crowded. And people kept. Standing. Right in front of me. While I was reading something. щ(≖益≖щ) *murders*

I finished reading the Third God as well, and the ending was surprisingly good! (almost everyone I was really attached to survived! :O) In the last few chapters everything sort of comes together and you see the huge cycle of history that the characters only occupy a small, final part of, and it shifts the way in which you look at the story in a really interesting way and FFF I LOVE IT, OK. I can't really say more without spoiling, which I won't because I need you all to read it so I have someone to talk about it to. It's main selling point is the setting, I think, which I'll probably talk about more later. The author also has a huge amount of world building notes up on his website, which makes him my favourite.

I think I'll probably end up reading it all over again soon from this new perspective and to look for foreshadowing. :3

The book I'm reading now is one my mum brought me from Germany a little while ago; Die Praktikantin by Yannik Mahr. It's a sort of satire romance intrigue, I think, about a Journalist who gets put in charge of a small rural newspaper, not the big metropolitan one he had his eyes on, and hires a pretty intern, and then according to the blurb something mysterious happens, idk. It's really amusingly written, so far.

I had my second German lesson last Monday, and it went really well. :D I ran out of time before I ran out of things to do, and everything. Spent the first half an hour or so talking about the Middle Ages, because the kids didn't know anything. They hadn't even heard of the reformation, apparently. I'm probably going to give them a short history lecture every week, starting with the Völkerwanderung next Monday, since it's relevant to the Nibelungen. I'm making a ~powepoint presentation~. 8D

I also have about two thirds of a blog post written about Nick Griffins hilarious "indigenous British who've been living here for 17000 years!" comment on BBC Question Time, which was about a million years ago in internet time but who needs temporal relevance amirite? I might finish it tomorrow, I've been wandering around London a lot today shopping with Tim and I'm not in the mood to concentrate on properly structured writing. God, I missed writing properly structured things about archaeology/history, though. So much.

Oh yeah, I also started filling out my MA application! My personal statement is another thing I will probably write tomorrow.

PS: I say I was shopping with Tim, it was mostly Tim shopping, really. I only bought one thing. ( A pretty cool thing )

So I was honestly halfway through writing a real entry. But then I got distracted. And now it's too late to scan the pictures I was going to put in it anyway without waking up my mum. So I will just leave you with the Gundam fanfaggotry and post the rest tomorrow.

Feel free to ignore this if you've already been subjected to my capslockspam on Tumblr. I am utterly incapable of discussing 00 sans capslock.

( OMG GANDAMU )

PS: I have given up speculating on what is in Innovators' pants, or if they ever underwent puberty. It is never going to make any sense.

The British museum sent me an email reminding me that I have tickets to the Moctezuma exhibition on Friday, titled "Your visit to Moctezuma", and while it was loading up on my phone, a part of me was imagining it was going to continue "... will have to be cancelled because the exhibits have mysteriously come to life/vanished."

Because I am secretly 10 years old.


To-day has been pretty useless. I had to go to the job centre in Weybridge at half past noon, and because the trains are lame, that meant I was out from 11 to 3pm. And after that I had a headache, so I laid down for a nap, and after that I've been too groggy to do much except read webcomics and stuff. I was going to do so much to-day, as well. D:


Oh, by the way, I don't think I ever posted it on here, but I made that photo blog for pictures I take on my phone! pseudocarp.tumblr.com. Check it out!


PS: Admit it, you totally want to see this, too. Yeah, I'm using tumblr a bit more lately. I sort of like to pretend my LJ is for longer, more thought-out posts. But then sometimes I post things like that trailer on there that I want to share with people on LJ, too. To expand my online presence over several different kinds of blog, or to contract it all into one? I am conflicted.

I am also going to bed now, definitely.

I went to the European Bookshop yesterday, with my mum and a colleague of hers from school who were textbook shopping, and I got some books to read with my German class. :D

I can't decide which to do (or which to do first, since they're pretty short), though. One is Level 4: Stadt der Kinder, which I read when I was little and is about a bunch of kids mysteriously becoming characters in a videogame. The other one is the Nibelungen written in easy words, which is also awesome because a) mythology is always awesome, and b) the book comes with little info sections about medieval history, and quizzes about the content, and all sort of other stuff that makes my life easier. So maybe I'll do that one first.

I am still a little terrified by this surprise teaching gig. XD I'm glad it's half term next week so I have time to figure out what's going on. Also I'm getting another group of really tiny 1st grade German children, who I get to teach how to read and write and stuff like that. :O HOW AWESOME IS THAT GOING TO BE? I've always sort of wanted to teach someone to read and write.



Also, the European Bookshop is the best thing in the world. I want to go back there when I have money and buy everything.


PS: Probably going to the London Expo next weekend. :D I'm trying to find something useful like a schedule of events on their website, but no luck so far. >_>

If anyone tries to tell you that I was actively looking forward to the day I could attempt to translate "The Spice must flow" into Japanese, they would be lying.

I actively look forward to the day I can translate "The Spice must flow" into Arabic.


I was going to go to this to-day, but it turns out it's one of those exhibitions you have to order tickets in advance for, and they're fully booked until later this week. Maybe I can drag someone along on the weekend.

I still want to go out somewhere, though... guess I should save my train money. :<

A little while ago, I made a resolution, to be more confident, to not put myself down by assuming I couldn't do things, and to throw myself in at the deep end more.

Granted, I made this resolution in the context of deciding on what difficulty level I should play BioShock on (which ended up being academic, since my computer overheats and freezes as soon as I get out of the elevator capsule thing and start enjoying the creepy atmosphere), but I think I can transfer it to teaching German classes to a handful of 13-year-old native speakers after school with absolutely no previous experience at all.

And next week, I'll have more than half a day's warning, so I'll have more of an idea what the fuck to do.



In other news, I've finally thought of something fun to do with tumblr. I often take pictures on my phone and then don't really have any idea of what to do with them. I cold spam twitter with them, but I'm not convinced pictures and twitter work that well together. I keep meaning to do an LJ picspam post with all of them, but I've not gotten around to it. So I had the idea yesterday that I could email them to tumblr straight from my phone whenever I take one. (Unless I find another/better site for mobile photo blogging.)

All that I have to do now is figure out a title.

I drew a diary-type comic that was going to basically be half of this entry yesterday, but I just noticed my new drawing pad is bigger than my scanner, so that's not going to happen right now. It's ok, it wasn't that well-drawn anyway.

I went to London with Tim on Friday, mainly to get some revision material for the JLPT, since the revision course I'd signed up for was cancelled due to lack of interest. >_<



Read Real Japanese is a little bit above my level still, actually - lots of grammatical structures I've not come across before - but in a few months I can probably handle it.


I also watched a ridiculous documentary about Easter Island this weekend, with a full complement of stupid, notably: "'primitive' cultures are too dumb to invent stuff themselves", "aliens did it", and "Egypt is the source of all monumental architecture".

Before they mentioned aliens and I stopped paying as much serious attention, I got really irritated with some archaeologist they interviewed who was talking as if it's really weird and unusual and probably ~*mysterious*~ that people would want to build these huge apparently useless statues*. I know it was a documentary and they were trying to make it interesting, but that sort of attitude irritates me for so many reasons. Trying to smother genuinely interesting and intriguing things in pointless obfuscating mysticism, for one thing, and the suggestion that only "sophisticated" cultures are good enough to build monuments. And on a more basic level: Come on. Have you not ever looked around? Building big awesome impressive things is pretty much what we, humans, do here! I mean, by all means, be impressed that we manage it, I am constantly impressed and amazed by the crazy stuff we manage to do, but being surprised by the simple fact that we try is practically insulting.

... I may care too much about this sort of thing.



OH HEY, AND NOW I MUST BE OFF TO TEACH A SURPRISE GERMAN CLASS. Be back to explain later, if the 13-year olds don't eat me. O_O