On Saturday thanks to drunk people being complete and utter assholes, I managed to get stuck in the lift.

There was a party in the building on Friday, with a lot of drunk people, one of which kicked the control panel of the lift in question hard enough to leave it dangling there.

Naturally as someone without common sense I decided to take the lift whilst thinking “Some poor basard is going to get stuck in here when it falls off”.

So of course it dropped off and after getting the attention of my fellow students, the alarm did not work (as expected), I waited about 45 minutes for the fire brigade to arrive and release me.

Excellent day, oh and film processing prices are getting ridiculous: I paid £16 for two 36 frame rolls of colour film to be processed and printed.

We were fucking around in the corridor one day, and some friends of mine decided to have a quick lightsaber battle, sadly I only managed to catch about 12s of video, which really rather annoys me.

Oh and they look like midgets because I had my camera in portrait rather than landscape format, then had to rotate the video which was then in turn squashed by youtube, anyway enjoy:

In my many conversations with people in my halls I’ve discovered just how naive they can be about various marketing techniques, they’ll pick up on overt ads onfacebook (their favourite haunt) and won’t click on them, but won’t pick up on the more subtle things.

I’ve noticed that some facebook applications cleverly insert affiliate links, which if used by people will offer them certain rewards like worthless “in-game” money which is hard to come by for the user but costs the creator nothing. Said creator is instead rewarded through whoever signs up to the products/websites they advertise using the aforementioned affiliate links, something the people I know have never picked up on, and probably wouldn’t have had I not mentioned it.

“Right, so you sign up to eBay using the link provided and get X amount of useless in-game money?” “Pretty much.” “Why would you? It’s a site you would use on a regular basis anyway…” “Yeah, but this way I can get stuff for my character!” “The guy who made this is making money off you.” “He is? I don’t ca…*collapses from head-wound*”

Something along those lines anyway, slightly worrying considering that these affiliate schemes tend to pay not only for sign-ups but also purchases, at least for a time.

And I’ve just given the very obvious game away, haven’t I?

Guess I should read up on writing facebook apps.

Well it would appear that I am still pretty high on google for the following search term as a result of a frustrated rant I posted while I was going through the UCAS submission process.

Your application has not yet been checked by your referee/co-ordinator

So I’m going to make a slightly more informed and helpful post.

“Your application has not yet been checked by your referee/co-ordinator” means exactly what it says on the tin, whoever is in charge of checking UCAS applications at your school/college has yet to do so, and is probably severely delaying your submission as was in the case for me (I had to say good-bye to those tasty low early entry offers). I had to bug my head of sixth form repeatedly and she didn’t do anything, typical for that place…

Anyway, relax and keep bugging them, they will eventually submit it and you will enter the exciting stage of the UCAS application process.

One exciting bit would be going to an interview (in my case at the University of Kingston), having a brilliant interview, being made an offer which was subsequently withdraw, with the official letter stating you did not attend the interview you went to, fun stuff!

Something which was sorted out by a phone call to them, and which still annoys me to this day, as it in my opinion soils my good name, as an extremely punctual person.

Snow is inevitable and something I dislike intensely. After decades of bad experiences with the stuff I’m not looking forward to it this year.

This year is going to be quite different as I’ll be cycling in the damn stuff daily, something I’m not looking forward to as I don’t have a lot of experience cycling in those conditions. I have done a bit of cycling in snow, as a kid on a mountain bike, so it hardly compares to what I’ll be facing in the coming weeks.

If anything, it’ll be incredibly exciting and it’ll turn me into an even bigger hazard to pedestrian scum.

A list of things I have discovered while living away from home.

1. Lifts generally do not work in halls of residences, are noisy, have somehow been used as a toilet and will be directly in line with your bed.
2. Thanks to the ’80s electrical heating system, and shoddy double glazing your room will have a complete inability to keep a constant temperature.
3. You want to hoover your room, but no hoover bag will be supplied (like it was meant to be) once the bag which was in the hoover when you moved in is full.
4. Employees think that European and International human rights laws do not apply to them and will enter your room without notice, permission or in fact knocking.
5. Jesus does not make your flatmate unblock the shower drain blocked by her hair. (more…)

I went to the DMU Anime society on Wednesday and it turned out to be quite a lot of fun, we watched Blood Trinity among other things, which I quite enjoyed, and they even had a raffle. After spending £3 on tickets (50p/per) I did eventually win a dvd, a copy of .hack//Roots, which retails on amazon.co.uk for £19.99. To be honest it’s a bit shit, but I won it so I can’t exactly complain.

I’ll probably be going again the people seemed fairly cool.

So as everyone knows motorists like to think that they own the road…

Well today I met an asshole who was driving in the wrong lane on campus so he could talk to his friend in the car beside him. So in order to squeeze through I had to cycle directly at him then quickly swerve past a parked car and he had the nerve to tell me that I should look where I’m going.

In other news I still haven’t managed to find a cheap track hub or preferably a cheap track wheel, by cheap I mean under £25 with shipping.

I randomly saw a guy writing up parking tickets on my way home from campus on Friday and talked to him, so I now know what times they supposedly work around here. Interestingly enough it’s during the time people start parking on the cycle lane that connects me to campus, up to around 2am.

So what I’m definitely going to do is start carrying my camera with me and forward pictures on to the council, with any luck my one man war will clean that street up.

The NUS Extra card scheme is currently a highly contested and very controversial subject on campuses across the nation.

The question most often raised is whether or not it offers students, who are already NUS members and therefore get a variety of NUS discounts with their University ID cards, any discernible advantages over the cards they were provided with by their Universities.

The NUS extra site screams gimmick when you access it, displaying images of grazing cows meant to encourage students to “milk” the various discounts offered by the NUS extra card, such as offers from Domino’s and Subway who offer independent student discounts negating the need for an NUS Extra card, so much for exclusivity. (more…)