The headaches are back again, feels like my fucking skull is being pulled apart. This isn’t helped by the rather serious patch of paranoia that I’m currently residing in. I feel that writing too much at this point will end up with me being alone and miserable again. Maybe that’s my problem, never wanting to say anything to let people know how I feel. For example, yesterday I was asked repeatedly about whether or not I was in a mood (I very much was) and every time I’d put on a brave face and lie about it – just to avoid the conflict. My life is a joke. It annoys that the words “shut up” can somehow be more offensive than the words “you’re creepier than that insane women on this show”. I’m sorry, but I’m just not a creep in any sense of the word.

Later that same night, the topic of ‘direction’ came up in a rather heart-felt conversion. The word direction is one that fills my very bones with fear and loathing. My life has no direction, I don’t know what I’m doing with the gift of life that has been given to me. My dreams of joining the Armed Services are more laughable than David Cameron’s attempts to convince us that he’s not a horrible Tory bastard. I’ve already proved twice that I do not have the discipline or the strength to hack it in the army. I spend most of my time watching the same TV shows and playing video games, and you know what I’m content to live my life this way – but it’s becoming obvious that this is starting to get to my girlfriend. I hope she hasn’t become bored with me because she’s the ray of light that brightens my day and I love every little bit of her so much. Of course at this point you’ll be saying “well, why not talk to her about this?” to which I’ll yell at you and ask whether or not you’ve been paying attention to anything I’ve been saying. I can’t talk to anyone about anything serious, whenever I’ve had to have a serious conversion with my girlfriend I’ve always started it with a text message. My life is a joke. I can listen to and help people with they’re problems, but when it comes to dealing with my own shit I’m completely lost.

And so ends my latest attempt to enter the ‘Who’s Who’ book of sad, self-interested losers.

CraigE

Yesterday saw a large enough invasion of people in a small field to accurately reenact the Battle of the Somme, but thankfully Sheffield doesn’t have a particularly high gun ownership amongst it’s student populise so no fighting broke out. However there were casualties from the day’s merriment, during a rather short and high spirited game of duck, duck, goose one of our number took out another resulting in a very badly damaged shin bone. This was soon sorted out with the proper addition of alcohol to the patient, although she is feeling the effects of the treatment this morning. There was also the nice presence of a football to kick around with, but because of the lack of space it was tricky to play an actual game and more trickier to not piss of the angry Geordie and his misses that were sitting near us.

The day could have been better though, I’d planned it oh so perfectly but then the true curse of anyone awesome enough to play laser tag cropped up – the curse of the kids party. Another set of my mates had planned to play laser tag at lunchtime until about half one or so, this was perfect because I could go play laser tag with them and still make it to Endcliffe Park with loads of time to spare. However because of the kids party we couldn’t get in until half four, this would mean missing pretty much the entire day at the park. I think the lesson here is that kids are just a bunch of gits.

We must have stayed out until about seven and it was still warm and sunny, but we got hungry and too drunk to stay out any longer. It really was an awesome day though, the amount of Facebook pictures shows that. Despite it being an awesome day, I’m torn between wanting to do it more often and not. To be honest there wasn’t much to actually do apart from a few games and I think that if we do it too often then it would become boring – saying this I hope we head on out today because I’ve got Extenuating Circumstances on my coursework and have nothing better to do apart from hang out with the girlfriend and I’m sure she’d rather be hanging out in a larger group in the sun and with a cold one or two.

CraigE

“Predicting the future is a mug’s game, but it’s one that most lifeforms learn to play – after all we all have to live there, possibly as soon as next week” – Douglas Adams via The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Off schedule again but I don’t care, and I’m sure you don’t either and you do then please forward your complaints to the email address on the contact page. Moving on then, it’s nearly that time of year where people once again change their religious status in order to exploit the best parts of a faith. Yes, it’s nearly Easter time again and as per normal that means that lovely chocolate eggs are going to start changing hands unless of course you have no hands – but if this is the case then I’d very much like to know just how you got yourself to this page. This time I’m not going to start ranting about the commercialisation of Easter as a festival, that would just be repeating myself after all.

A Race Down under

Right the F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain was so terribly boring and uneventful that I’m not even going to class it as a race, however in the early hours of Sunday morning the F1 season got underway for real in Melbourne. The 2010 Australian Grand Prix was even more exciting as the previous race 2009, with some fantastic over-taking from Button and Hamilton and a truly brilliant drive from Renualt’s Robert Kubica to fight off the Ferrari’s for second place. The best incident of the race was the moment that Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel went flying off the track whilst he was miles clear in pole position. Also interesting crashes with Alonso on the first corner, Hamilton and Webber taking each other out on the second to last lap and a truly spectacular crash with BMW new boy Kamui Kobayashi flying and taking out Nico Hülkenberg early on. A fantastic win for Jensen Button, his first for his new team of McLaren Mercedes, after his brilliant decision to change tyres several laps before the rest of the pack – great tactician.

After this race, I have high hopes for the remainder of the season and can only hope that the race next week in Malaysia will be just as enjoyable. Thankfully it’s not quite as early a start next week, with the race starting at 9am rather than 7am like the Australian GP did this weekend. This early start meant that I didn’t sleep at all last night in order to be up to watch it, and I am feeling very tired right now.

Homeward Bound

The impending approach of Easter means that I get time off university, and the sneakiness of the UREP means that I technically get three weeks off instead of just two. However, I’m not returning home until Good Friday because I want to stay up in Sheffield and spend some more time with my lovely girlfriend who recently quit her job and therefore has time to just be. It’s nice to see more of her again after she worked 12 hours shifts 5 days a week when she had her job. This does however mean that I only have 9 days at home but I can deal with that, not too much longer until the end of the academic year anyway – then it’s off to Prague!

Not all is Quiet on the Western Front

Over recent weeks it seems that a cold war has started to develop in this little house of mine, the funniest thing is that not everyone seems to actually realise that the hatred has escalated to this level. I think it’s lucky that Easter rolled around when it did this year in order to give people a respite from each other, not that this little break to will do very much – but as Tesco say ‘Every Little Helps’

I hope that the hostilities do start to die down, mainly because they’ll probably end up being aimed towards me eventually – they usual are – and partly because most of us are living together next year as well and it would be horrible for it to continue across two years. Hopefully things will be calm down soon…

CraigE

An array of different areas of EfW that I hadn’t even thought of, including the production of Bio-Diesel from waste which could help to cut down on both carbon emissions and the amount of land being set aside for ‘petrol plants’. One interesting fact that came up during this particular talk was the fact that the company in question ‘Green Fuels’ actually provided the fuel and support for the Top Gear BMW 3 Series 24 Racing Car and it was the vice-chairman of the company’s car that was raided for a fuel injector which the car needed just before the race.

Probably the most amusing part of the conference was the talk given by one particular EfW company (won’t name them for legal reasons) that was almost entirely comprised of property developers rather the usual environmental chemists and waste management experts like one would expect. The guy giving the talk had absolutely no idea what he was talking about and it wasn’t hard to notice, after all it was a room of experts (and me) that he was presenting to. The inconsistency in the figures he was giving bordered on the absurd and the lack of any knowledge concerning the planning permissions (an area you’d think he know well, being a property developer) was even worse. Needless to say there were several disgruntled murmurings around the room.

There was also an interesting talk, or rather two talks about the delays in construction of the EfW facilty in Barking by Cory Environmental Services. The site took about 15 years to get planning permission after countless protests from locals, which were taken rather seriously by Bexley Borough Council and in fact Mayor of London Ken Livingston. One of the talks was from Cory themselves, simply giving an update as to the construction and opertational status of the facility, including the forced temporary removal of a protected species from the site during the construction period. The species in question was the Water Vole, which became a protected species during the construction of the road link to the site, the total cost to Cory for this safe removal and moving of the habitat was roughly £250k. The other was from the Head of Waste and Street Services of Bexley Borough Council, the council that had a hand in the delay of the Riverside/Belvedere facility in Barking. It turns out that Cory had the last laugh, because the delays have ended up costing the Borough Council a damn site more than it would if they’d giving them the go ahead 15 years ago.

Overall it was an interesting day and I met some very nice people, funny to note that the majority of the people at the conference were of a more senior age group than I expected – just goes to show that experience is everything in this field I suppose.

CraigE

Right this weekend sees the start of the new F1 season *jumps for joy* and also the return of Michael Schumacher to the starting grid. Although Schumacher’s defection from his beloved Ferrari to their arch-rivals McClaren does seem a little bit odd, it’s still good to see him back – although I always preferred Mika Häkkinen. God there’s some tricky to spell names today. I just hope the season is as good as last year, not sure if Jenson will do a double though – I’m sure he’d love to but there’s stiff competition this season. As long as one of the Brits win then I’ll be happy. After the qualifying for the Bahrain GP later this weekend, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel on pole with the Ferrari’s of Massa and Alonso in second and third.

Last night I discovered that I have practically no local multiplayer games for my 360, pretty much all of them either require a system link or play over XboxLive. This discovery came about after my girlfriend finished playing Fable II and we wanted to see if there were any other games that we could both play, but it turns out that only Halo 3 and PES-2009 are the only two that support local multiplayer and to put it lightly she hates them both. So I may be going on a multiplayer game hunt later today. I just want to know what’s wrong with local multiplayer that has caused an almost complete shun from the gaming world.

Over the last week I’ve been reading the latest installment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ‘And Another Thing…” written by Eoin Colfer. Now you can tell that it wasn’t written by the late Douglas Adams, but it’s definitely a great read and very funny and it’s really fixed in the correct style of writing for the series. I would heartily recommend it to people who love the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

CraigE

Anyway, during my week off I’ve been able to fully plan my dissertation topic for next year. This may sound boring but the title is going to be; Social, Environmental and Economic Issues of Energy Recovery Facilities – or something with those words in it. Energy Recovery is the use of incinerators to generate energy from household or industrial waste and requires a great deal less energy to run than it produces. However in the past it has always had a negative stigma about it, with people never wanting it near them – saying that no one wants any form of energy production near them; the Dengie Peninsula in Essex is great example of this. They had a Nuclear Power Station at Bradwell, they protested and it eventually got shutdown after a shift away from Nuclear Power, but to help fill the energy gap the government tried to put Wind Generators in the area and surprise surprise they didn’t want that either. Even the ‘green’ form of energy is hated by a disturbingly large number of the populace, with a shockingly large number of anti-climate change and anti-green energy groups on Facebook. Saying all this, I haven’t actually started writing it yet, but I am being proactive – in fact I’m going to a conference on the subject in London on the 19th March and I’ve become a member of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management.

Yeh a rather short post this week, but in truth not much has happened really – things are going to pick up soon with the starts of the new Baseball and F1 seasons later this month. I’ll see you next week then. If you want more to read then head on over the Gaming Corner that has three new reviews within the last week: Bioshock 2, Fable II and Saints Row 2 – a massive sequelfest. Talking of the Gaming Corner, I need someone to design me a header for the page that incorporates the logos of the major players in the gaming world: Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony and maybe some older console logos like the N64 and the PS2 and so on. If you can design stuff then please let me know.

CraigE

CraigE

Moravia

There was something strange in the air around the City of Moravia and had been for a few while now, but no one seemed to notice or care. No one except for Ellesmere, but whenever he mentioned it people would simply ignore him to tell him to shut up and go away. It wasn’t that Ellesmere was untrustworthy or a con-artist, these would require some degree of skill or intelligence neither of which were his strongest attributes, it was simply that he was rather foolish at times. This has been made obvious to almost all those around him, for example; when he was small boy he declared to everyone that the end of the world was coming, only to later discover that it was in fact just that his calendar had come to an end. Ellesmere was generally a good hearted and kind person, but was more often than not bewildered by the world him.

Moravia itself was awash with industry and marvellous inventing minds, making it the jewel of the region. The masters of invention were the minds working in the Academy of Minds of Magic at the centre of the city; these brilliant minds were always producing more complex and impractical solutions to relatively simple problems. However no one ever seemed to begrudge them this because at least they were keeping busy and on the whole were well meaning. Smoke and explosions constantly arose from the Academy’s courtyards, although in truth these were nothing more than purposely made smoke and explosions by the older and wilier scientists and magicians of the academy in order to make themselves look busy so that no one would ask them for help with anything. It’s not that they were lazy; it’s they were old, very old; in fact they were the oldest surviving people in the city because of brilliant advances in medicine had prolonged their lives. Some of younger and more adventurous scientists would often question this behaviour and for that they were exiled to the academy’s labyrinth-like administration offices to sort mail and lick stamps. The administration offices are very well staffed these days.

Ellesmere however was not a brilliant scientist or magician by any stretch of any imagination that has ever existed. He had once applied to the Academy but during his inaugural experiment he accidently ended up turning half of the city’s population into singing goats just as the neighbouring yeti horde arrived for their annual assault on the city and its people.

And so Ellesmere failed to get the placement at the Academy just like he failed to get work at any other respectable organisation, thankfully in a modern city like Moravia there were plenty of unrespectable organisations that were less meticulous about a person’s intellectual misgivings. Of course these groups generally operated in that strange grey area of the law which in most cases would require constant watch by law enforcement personnel, however the city’s soldiers were normally occupied trying to locate the jam that was always reported stolen from Duke Ivan’s pantry. In fact nothing was ever stolen from the Duke’s castle, and the truth was that the Duke didn’t like to admit that he ate too much and so would eat the jam in secret and then report it stolen in the morning. This had been going on for several years now and as such Duke Ivan was rather on the large side and because of the constant consumption of large amounts of sugar he was mostly a gibbering maniac. This had become a problem, however during one of his more deranged moments he appointed a garden gnome to the position of Steward of the City. It wasn’t long before this was exploited by someone or something, and in fact the current Steward is actually a redheaded midget called Katric wearing a rather poorly made garden gnome costume.

So this was the city in which Ellesmere was born, dropped on his head and raised. An outside observer might think that, despite his clumsy nature, he was the in fact one of the few sane people living within the city. This observer would be pretty much on the money. Saying this it was happy city and things moved along the same way that they had for many years, however something was happening within the city; something that hadn’t really happened in living memory. Change was upon the horizon. Change was not a common thing in Moravia, due largely because people in charge always fear change. In fact change was feared so much that the word had been removed from the local dictionary encase someone read and acted upon it. The only people that wanted change were those stuck in the Academy of Mind and Magic’s administration offices; however they knew what they were getting themselves in for.

Change

Ellesmere was, as usual, spending his evening in the bar of the Pixie and Patrick – partly because he rather enjoyed his ale, but mainly because Lord Katric had introduced an extra two hours in the day which were by law set aside for being drunk and happy. Lord Katric was very popular because of this. It made the people happy, the bar owners happy but happiest of all were the manufacturers of hangover remedies.

Ellesmere was already deep into his drinking britches by the time that his friends Alexis and Losco walked in to join him. Alexis and Losco were Ellesmere’s best friends in the city and they got on well, especially when drinking. They’d all been friends since Ellesmere stumbled into Pixie and Patrick about two years ago and bought everyone a drink, a sure-fire method of making friends in any city. They met up almost every day in order to drink and make outrageous claims about what they’d do differently if they were in power and how they’d spend all the money such power brings. Of course the likelihood of anyone entrusting these three with any sort of power was quite frankly more laughable than being tickled by the Giant Feathered Geebee Bird, largely because the three of them were not exactly brilliant at anything of any real use.

After roughly ten pints of the bar’s strongest ales, Ellesmere raised his eyes above his glass (after some effort) and looked around him, something seemed to be very odd indeed. After another considerable piece of effort he turned to Alexis and Losco, “Is it just me, or is it rather quiet in here?” he asked. The others looked up blurry eyed from their own glasses, “You know, it kinda is” slurred Losco. Little did the group realise it, but in fact the entire bar was completely silent and everyone was seemingly stock still. In truth the bar had ceased all movement roughly an hour ago but the group had been far too drunk to notice, the local brew tended to have this effect on people.

After a minute of two Ellesmere examined the nearest patron, “What the hell is going on here?” he asked, “Everyone’s frozen solid”. By this point Alexis had finally stumbled to her feet, “They can’t be, it must be the drink messing with you” she said. “No, he’s right” yelled Losco, whilst he smashed a bar stool over the head of the nearest city banker. “But how?” asked Ellesmere. They wondered outside to see if anyone else had noticed, but they hadn’t due to the fact that everyone else was in a similar situation to those within the bar. “Right! What the hell is going on here?” yelled Ellesmere.

They walked the streets of the city for about an hour, coming across everyone that they’ve ever seen frozen on the spot like statues. The fact that everyone was frozen provoked different reactions from the three; Ellesmere was gobsmacked, Losco was strangely excited and Alexis was far too drunk to form a coherent opinion about anything at this time. Although, the positions that some of the people were frozen in would have made the world’s most humourless man howl with laughter. It was time for the three to create a plan, “Let’s go to the castle and steal some real expensive junk” suggested Losco. “Let’s just go and get another drink” hic-cupped Alexis. “No, we have to find out what’s going on around here” demanded Ellesmere. After knocking they’re heads together, the others agreed with Ellesmere and they decided to head to the Academy of Minds and Magic.

After a brief stop to steal the wallet of a particularly unpopular debt collector, the three arrived at the Academy of Minds and Magic only to find that it too seemed completely void of any movement. The Academy Standard was frozen in the air, there was even an explosion caught in the time freeze and this really caught all three pairs of drunken eyes. “Well, as they’re all frozen can we take their stuff?” enquired Losco. “What’s wrong with you?” asked Ellesmere, “This is a seriously fucked up situation right here and all you can think about is lining your wallet, we have to find out how to fix this.” A pained look crossed Alexis’ face, the sort of look that passes over the faces of those that try to teach people with no hands to play the accordion, “I hope you’re not suggesting that we read through the whole damned library to find the answer, coz there’s no chance of that happening mister – not without some more drink”.

Thanks for reading it, please leave some feedback in the comments section

CraigE

Although some may be sympatric/pitiful towards me concerning how the latest one ended, there is no need. Nor is there need to say horrible things about a person you’ve never met in order to make me feel better (just encase you thinking about it), because I’m happy for her and wish her only the best. Although having to live with her after this has proven tricky, because having to see a girl that I still love every single day can be somewhat heartbreaking and potentially dangerous, what with my recently rediscovered love of hardline alcoholic beverages could prove to be harmful to both my liver and my wallet – a bottle of whiskey costing me £21, oh what crazy times we live in. It can also be damaging my mind because of the lack of sleep I’ve had recently, been just lying there thinking about all the things that I may have done better (trust me there’s a fair few, I’m no model boyfriend), but in end she’d have figured out how she felt about her ex eventually – at least it wasn’t a year down the line. At least because he’s back in her hometown I don’t have to hear her through the wall, unlike last time I wrote a personal post. My chief concern right now concerning all this is that she might be leaving university and that would mean I’d lose one of the best and only friends that I have left.

Can’t help but feel like I’ve massively upset people somehow, especially the people back home. Except from a couple of Twitter based comments and two Windows Live conversations, I’ve had almost zero contact with any of my friends back in Essex. Considering that I only went out with them twice over the six week winter vacation, I can’t help but feel like I’ve offending someone – like a person vomiting on the shoes of the Queen. There are a couple of people that I’m not even sure are still amongst the living, with my attempts to regain contact going either unheeded or simply unnoticed. This has made me paranoid about the possibility that something damaging about my character may have come to light without me knowing and thus causing my near total ostracization by the group. It’s a similar story further north in Sheffield, although I’ve never really had many friends during my second university attempt. Most of the friends I did have either graduated or are out on placement and I have no real way of contacting the remaining couple.

I thought I’d write this post now, seeing as that most horrible of days is lurking over the horizon like a certain type of person lurks outside a playschool. Of course I mean Valentines Day, I’m sure that man was murdered horribly so I guess it successful sums up my feelings towards the day. My dislike towards February 14th steams from the fact that only 4% (yes I did the math) of the February 14th that I’ve lived through have seen me with another person, thats a solitary one year out of a possible twenty one.

Right now that I’ve successfully put off anyone ever wanting to go out with me again, or be a friend for that matter, I’m going to vanish into the night – or at least vanish into this bottle of whiskey.

CraigE

The VW Golf advert’s tagline states: “Why drive something like a Golf, when you can drive a Golf?”, so what about the VW Scirocco then? Although the cars are classified as a ‘Hot’ Hatchback and a Sports Saloon respectively, the two cars are very similar in appearance and specifications. So if you want to drive a Golf and not something like a Golf then the Scirocco is out of bounds for you I’m afraid. This seems to be against the good form of VW advertising, with there smart adverts rather than the loud non-sensical madness that other car firms offer up – notably Honda. This good history was explored during a fairly recent episode of Top Gear, when the guys tired to make an advert for the VW Scirocco – of course this attempt was up to the usual Top Gear high standards.

(Pictures of the VW Golf and VW Scirocco, in order to show their similarity)

Now for the madness of the Volvo C30 advert, and in fact the adverts for the other latest models for Volvo cars, with there great tagline: “There’s more to life than a Volvo, that’s why you drive one”. That has to be one of the craziest taglines in marketing history, I just don’t know how this is supposed to portray a positive image for the company – especially in this day and age when most people don’t pay attention long enough to hear the whole line. “There’s more to life than a Volvo you say? Then I’ll spend my money and time on more worthwhile things then thankyou”. Although saying this the C30 does seems to be a nice car, but isn’t exactly the kind of car that appeals to me.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m planning to write my Geography dissertation around the subject of coastal defences of the future in the UK – if anyone by any chance knows some good sources of information send me a heads up.

CraigE