Personal checkpoint, March 2006

Forgive me readers for I have sinned. It’s been ten days since my last post.

This is one of those rarer posts about my personal life for people who know or care…

Home

Clarissa is back in Germany attending job interviews while we’re waiting for her license to come through. We furnishes the flat with some plants before she left including a orange tree that is producing very tiny oranges that are apparently great for marmalade. I tried one and tasted just like an orange Skittle Sour.

Study

I’ve started on my final year of my BSc with T305 — Digital Communications. For me it’s very uneven as one minute we’re covering topics I know well like object orientation and network protocols then the next deep in state machines, SDL and calculating physical characteristics of media — which I don’t. I think I’m doing okay so far although I’ll know better once I get my first assignment back.

My result for last years TM427 still isn’t through yet — end of March apparently — and the anticipation is unbearable. It’s been over three months since I submitted my mini-eBay style project. If I can get a merit on either last year or this years course then that’ll land me a first with honours, otherwise it’s a 2:1.

Games

Study hasn’t quite zapped all my time and I’m still getting a bit of virtual r ‘n r on World of Warcraft. I’ve almost caught some of my old Jersey mates up so will be able to go questing again with them soon I hope.

I’ve barely touched Civ4 and I’m working out a PC shuffle-round to get Clarissa with her own gaming PC here so I can also game when she’s lost in Civ3 or Need for Speed. I’ve shown her WoW but she really isn’t interested although Amy likes it but not as much as the Sims.

I’m currently trying to source a Cooler Master CM 260 case and a suitable mini-ATX Pentium M motherboard. More news as it happens.

We’ve also got our hands on a few board games too including 221b Baker Street — a rather fun Sherlock Holmes style mystery that required a little more intelligence than Cluedo. Our game of Dungeons & Dragons (basic board game) needed more players and perhaps a more serious touch. We’ve still to give Mysteries of Old Peking and HeroQuest a shot.

I think I’m a bad influence on people who would otherwise have a much more active social life… Oh well, at least Clarissa and I managed to get a game of badminton in before she left and Aims and I ran around at the park for a bit.

DamoPlex

The DamoPlex, as it has become known, had a successful screening of BMX Bandits last week. I wanted to do a double-bill with Chuck Norris but the audience couldn’t take much more cheese.

The Hitachi projector is working really well although I decided to get some blackout curtains to help with day-time viewing. I’ve ordered an adapter for the Shuttle to enable component high-def output from the Radeon 9600SE card.

The Xbox 360 will look amazing so I’ve been told and obviously the PC will be an improvement over the non-widescreen 1024×768 res it’s pumping out at the moment. I’m interested in finding out whether the Denon 2900 DVD player can do a better job at progressive scan than the Hitachi TX-200 projector.

[)amien