So I’ve decided to run a little contest for people – or at least those who actually read this…

At with most people I tend to acquire a bunch load of small change from the shops, which gets gathered together at home and eventually – and I mean eventually – gets changed into proper, more usable forms of money. Right now I’m using a ziploc bag in my room to hold my change until the time comes.

So here’s the contest. See that bag? Guess how much is there. The bag is about two-thirds full, and filled only with coppers – 1c, 2c and 5c. At some point in the future I will either get it changed into proper cash, or I’ll set aside an hour or two and tediously go through it myself so that I have some highlight of my day to talk about.

I don’t know myself how much is there. Could be very little (although that’s not very likely given the sheer amount of coins in it), or it could be a lot. Since I’ve nothing better to offer, whoever guesses closest to the actual amount in there when I get it changed – and bear in mind, I could still add my day to day coppers to it between now and then – gets the total donated to a charity of their choice.
As long as I can do it online.

So ummm, go nuts!

Unless you’ve been under a rock and haven’t been noticing the Fantasy Premier League this week, you’ll have noticed Rooney’s scoring in both the first match, and his quad in the second match. Those combined with all the bonuses, and most importantly captaincy, resulted in this:

Bloody brilliant. Except for the fact that just-about everyone in the game did the same…

Then came the finding out of the news that the HeartGold and SoulSilver arc for PokéSpecial has been announced as actually going to happen! Just as bloody brilliant as well – GSC is my second favourite arc of the series (after RS of course!) and Gold is one of my favourite characters of them all. It will be interesting to see what happens, especially if he and Silver are now both coming of age – seeing as they were thirteen in their last appearance in the Emerald arc, and now they’ve taken on the qualities and facial structure changes as what Red looked like in FRLG when he had turned sixteen.

Besides, the HGSS outfit is even more win now that I see how manga Gold looks in it. It was badass enough on the in-game Hibiki, but with the youth of the kid… Now though, with teenage Gold, with his same goggles and snooker cue as before…

Let’s just say I now have a fuck-ton more research before Nom-Con…

Also, three-page preview courtesy of Coronis is even more win, despite the fact that there’s not all that much in it, other than the blatantly obvious evolution of Ataro to an Ambipom.

Just. Win.

When what seems like every second blog post I read, every fifth tweet, and every radio new bulletin I listen to mention Haiti, it’s more a case of jumping on the bandwagon rather than genuine concern. Now I can deal with that no problem (I just ignore you…), but what irks me is that the majority of these things also involve somewhere an attempt to get you to go donate money to some random charitable organisation that claim they are going there to use that money to help rebuild and rescue and whatnot.

Bullshit.

And it’s made an absolute fuckton worse when every third e-mail I get is from some random site I’m on sending a circular to all members bugging them to go donate.

I can deal with this thing poisoning my feed inbox, infiltrating my Seesmic, and being blared out by my clock radio beside my bed – but when it starts to get shoved down my throat in my inbox, now that’s just crossing the damn line. If I was going to donate to this crisis, I’d do it of my own accord out of the goodness of my heart. But when you’re agonisingly bugging me – almost to the extent of shunning me when I do nothing – then I don’t see the point in bothering, when all I’m going to end up doing is jumping on this bandwagon.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? How about everyone else on earth living their life as normal, versus a country that doesn’t seem to have prepared for this sort of situation, despite being located practically right next to the edge of the Caribbean Plate, which has had a fair few quakes over the past few decades? (Provided these images on Wikipedia are anything to believe.)

I’m sick of it. All of you bugging me about it have caused me to close my wallet back up and put it back into my pocket. Well done.

After last year’s epic fix whereas that "Aloha Arleen" or whatever-you-call-her won in personal over our good friend McAWilliams just because she had exponentially more followers, I say we try an easier category to fix this year.

While I’m aware that the gaming category isn’t an official category, it’s still a fairly significant community category.

So, what are you waiting for? Get stacking that vote for yours truly already!

I’ll wait.

…

Back? Good. Now I can talk as if you know what I mean

So, after originally starting out with that fairly shit compared to current standards, major battles of Japanese Pokémon Platinum thing, which at the time was recorded with my regular normal Sony DSC-W35 at a resolution of 640×480 with the sound having to be recorded as it came from the DS speakers meaning I had to shut the fuck up, and edited using Windows Movie Maker; I got a couple of fans. Nothing major really, although at this stage I’m still astounded as to how my Elite Four battle video against Cynthia has garnered 1700+ views in little over a year (obviously the kids were really stuck!).

After that, I was originally going to start the new American Platinum full LP – as in full game coverage and commentary – with that shitty camera, when I acquired my current camcorder, my Canon HF100; and at the same time, came across Sony Vegas 9.^† Sure, full HD may be overkill, but then again it gives me room for error before I edit it down to 720p for uploading. But most importantly, it does have that microphone input jack so I can actually have decent quality game sound. That style of proper LP’ing brought in a few more subs.

But I must say it wasn’t until SoulSilver was released in Japan, and I started that LP that I’ve really started to "take off" in regular viewers. Sure it’s not by much, but at least I know I have people out there that do look forward to what I upload – well, I hope. With a new game, new blind running, and new commentary style, I do kinda feel like I’ve got this thing well and truly sorted.

And now thanks to TheAlmightyBear (aka my gaming machine!) and with a little help from Fraps ($37 well spent tbh!), I now have my other side of LP’ing in what is currently Borderlands – as well as the possibility of some other random PC gaming videos. While this itself does need some work to perfect, I think I have this down as well. At least, I know I do now that I’ve figured out a setting to turn off in Vegas to properly line up the Fraps clips, which are unfortunately limited to 3.9GB each, meaning each particular video is actually about seven or eight files mashed into one. And I hope I’ve fixed the sound level problems for the future as well. Since I thought I could reduce the game volume by reducing the general speaker volume – and that not working – I’ve now gone ahead and turned down the volume for Stereo Mix specifically. At least next time I’m running a sound test I can be sure that’s working.

Agh, gone off the point…

Anyway, I’m probably getting way too ahead of myself here, but I’m actually starting to think about what I need to do when if I get popular. Will I need to start setting up fan pages on places? Official fan groups? An official fan forum? Sure, I’d like it and all, but I just hope that people won’t get too ahead of themselves…

…

Actually, I hope none of my subscribers are reading this…

* looks around *

* legs it *

^† Don’t ask what I mean by "came across", alright?

I’m not sure if I really get all the hype over a new year. It’s just a number ticking over the next one because the cycle has ended. If we celebrate a new year, then why don’t we celebrate every new month, day, hour, minute or even second? HAPPY NEW SECOND! And again, HAPPY NEW SECOND! Get over it.

But since when it comes to statistics purposes, a new year is a fresh start, so a few things that I’m saying now that I’m going to do and probably won’t:

• Write something half-decent at least twice a week
• Either write an article on behalf of the bear, or make a bear comic at least every other week
• Do a video rant (well, more of an audio rant) at least every month.
• Bring those game review things I tried back, as well as doing a proper review of them on Shoryuken if not already done there.
• Not change little cosmetic aspects of my site every week. Do it up once, and then just leave it.

Also, one more good thing about this year is that I turn 21.

I’m a little worried about that, not because of the actual age itself, but more the fact that I have four distinct groups of people that I feel I "belong to" that will likely want to celebrate with me. If that means four parties in one week, then woo-hoo!

If your first instinct right now is to scroll right down to that comments box and ask me “Why?”, I’m just going to say right now “Why not?”. There’s not much different to a normal fancy dress or costume party (especially when it’s one of Elly’s!) – you’re just being someone from anime, manga, video games etc.. It’s along the same lines as LARPing (Live Action Role Playing games, for those of you who are uneducated), just not with a game in mind, only fun. So I’d like to see you turn around and tell me it’s not normal.

I’ve already started planning for next year’s anime convention schedule, so that I can hopefully go as part of a cosplaying pair or group, and possibly even have skits prepared for some of the more major cons. Why start planning so early? Well, everyone else seems to be doing so as well. Plus, the more time I have available, the more time I have to actually get something made for it, and that doesn’t look like crap. Or so I can just continually go on about how much time I have left, only to procrastinate and realise two weeks before the con that I’m royally fucked. The latter option is very likely to happen, unless those who I’m cosplaying with start beating me with sticks to get me to get stuff done.

I would start arguing about why should things like this be limited to conventions, but the main thing about that is the point of view of the public, who may not exactly consider this sort of thing to be normal or acceptable behaviour. Yes, this is something probably best kept to group meetings with like-minded people who are actually into this sort of thing. Doesn’t mean that meetings can’t be arranged though. Several times throughout the year I hear of cosplay photoshoots wanting to be held, that would interest me, again if I was actually half-decent at costume creation so that I’d look good on camera – and if that one decent picture of me I found from Eirta this year is anything to go by, I sure as hell don’t!

And if you think I’m already off my rocker with all this, I’m probably going to make me sound even more insane to you right now – I’m even thinking about having a cosplay party for my 21st. Yes, consider me sad if you will, but I would certainly enjoy a party where everybody is in a character not them. Sure it’d probably alienate a fair few of my friends and would probably be just eirtaku peeps attending, but all I’d say to that is that anyone not being there would be missing out big time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off back to deviantArt to go gawp at people…

It really doesn’t help when I have a pretty good Raptr rank achievement-wise either…

It wasn’t just my videos that I noticed this. Partner videos, or videos in general that had revenue sharing enabled on them also didn’t have a right-click context menu available to use. I decided to have a look and see what the main issue was, and what it was that was stopping these videos from using the new features.

For this test, I used my Eirtakon 09 Smash Bros. finale video, as I shot that in full HD and uploaded the raw file directly onto YouTube without any editing.

The view for me in IE, logged in:

Since I thought it would be a browser issue, I then tried it in Chrome, logged out obviously:

Just in case it wasn’t a browser issue, I went ahead and tried it again in an InPrivate window in IE:

So what is it that’s stopping us from being able to view this info on our own videos while logged in? I can understand why it wouldn’t work on videos with revenue sharing enabled and that have an ad laid on top of the video, but for your own uploads is just a pain…

Seriously? It’s like why are Subway subs always nicer when you get them toasted, despite them charging an extra 20c for it (except in Westmoreland St. – epic win there). And why are chicken and turkey nicer when roasted?

I’ve had nothing else really to post lately… *sweatdrop*

There’s still stuff here?

Been way too busy recently to get the energy or the drive to write up anything. I blame Eirtakon, the LAN, crummy UNICEF Soc events that didn’t need us for two hours, pub nights, AMS, Games Soc in general, Left 4 Dead 2, and the like.

Remind me to post stuff again soon. Maybe after I finish updating the site with things and stuff. Needs more bear comics, game reviews, links and the like.

Ugh, effort…

Other than the con, there’s also a bit of work we on the Games Soc committee will be doing to get ready for the BYOPC LAN the weekend after. So the majority of Friday will be spent in the Helix checking out the space that we have (which, rather handily, is known as the space ) and just making sure that everything is running fine. Most important thing is to check the Internet connection and to make sure that all the ports are available for use, as we can’t have people arriving with their machines and then finding that half of the competitors haven’t got all their games and Steam up-to-date. And there may also be a general issue of overall room, but that really does depend all on numbers and whether we get them or not. Still it should be a good weekend, as this is the first LAN we’ll have had where I have an actual decent computer. <3 TheAlmightyBear!

If you’re looking for specs of the machine, apparently Xfire has them.

As for the con itself, I should be there for the whole weekend. I’m definitely going to be there Friday night for the quiz (since I’m around campus that day anyway!), although whether you will see me as Hibiki like you will both other days, I’m still not sure about. But yes, I’ll be there the whole entire weekend, from opening Saturday to closing Sunday. How long I spend in the middle is the real question, although I think one of my friends who lives nearby is loaning me his couch for the night so I don’t have far to go after whatever trip out Saturday night, and I can actually make it in on time Sunday morning

I still have a couple of things I need to do for my cosplay, but for the most part things are done. I say for the most part, because I’m not entirely too sure if I can be bothered to finish it off – and it’s not like I’m going for full-blown accuracy or anything. Then again rushed jobs never hurt people. No sneaky previews still (because I’m not arsed trying to photograph myself), but no recoiling in horror when you do see me. One problem with trying to do a circa ten-year-old kid is that your body’s physiology is much different.
Brrr, my legs are cold

One good thing that I did manage to come across yesterday, while in Penneys exchanging down a size for my costume (while the size I had was fine for me personally, it didn’t work too well for the actual costume itself) was in Smyths with a whole bunch of little plastic Pokémon figurine sets going on BOGOF. So, now my con bag is filled with them, just in case people still have no idea who I am. Also, I think Fiona is loaning me her Togepi plushie for the weekend (that she had when she went as Misty for Halloween), which will definitely help! Now, I just wonder whether or not I’m going to make the bear into a Teddiursa or something…

Starting this week is the RedBrick Halloween Intersocs Ball thingy. Tbh I’m really not sure what point there is to it other than to go to a bar, get buy one get one free drinks all night, and have an excuse to wear your Halloween costume again. None of which really helps me since I don’t drink, generally go to bars unless they serve good food (like the nuBar!), nor did I have a Haloween costume, since I laid low this year. Well, technically I could go in the costume that I’m planning for…

Eirtakon – the weekend after next. Otaku and other anime, manga, and possibly video game nerds congregating in the Hub to do what we would usually do, parading around pretending to be people we’re not, and making the place smell so bad that everyone will notice it on Monday morning

I’ll hopefully be there for the whole weekend, or at least that’s what my pre-registration ticket is saying to me. I actually found it a little scary that my reference number was number seven, and I’m not even a bigger nerd than some of those who frequent the Eirtaku forums, and IRC channel that I always lurk in when I even get the chance to connect because the server the channel is on doesn’t like so many connections from Redbrick at the same time… No matter what, I’ll be going as Hibiki from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, even if my costume is half-assed and nowhere near as accurate as some people have managed to do.

Please no glomping, as I may be carrying my laptop in that bag, as well as having my DS in one hand playing some Pokémon game, and my internet tablet in the other tweeting my way through the con via LapLan. That is, if they keep LapLan on. They better fucking keep LapLan on, else I’m breaking into either Clubs and Socs or the Mezz and then tweeting my way through.

Then the weekend after that again is the Games Soc BYOPC LAN, which will be the first one I’ll have attended with an actual desktop computer of mine that can actually run Source! Sure, it’s not going to be the most blinged out thing there (I’m looking at you, you Alienware-purchasing knobheads), but at least it’s something half-decent. Don’t expect much tweeting as I’ll be too busy gaming

And finally in the last weekend of the month, several of us from Games Soc are going to Video Games Live. It will be epic. Maybe I’ll se some of you there, provided you’re going on the 29th?

Anyway, I’m off to go source out a supplier of very cheap energy drink, since I’m going to need a hell of a lot of it to keep me awake this month…

So, seeing as I had to leave very quickly this morning and wasn’t able to clean up the kitchen downstairs before I left, I told myself I’d go back home much earlier than normal tonight and get it done, as well as maybe making something for dinner with the random crap lying around in the fridge or freezer. With the aim and intention of getting the 1950 to be home by around nine, I left at around a quarter past seven.

Now while services from DCU to town are plentiful and regular, they still tend to come in a clump. And when those clumps generally mean that you only have twenty minutes to get into town and you have no idea how bad the traffic and/or demand for the bus will be, you have the hard choice of risking it in town, or going through Phibsborough and then hopping on one from there to Cabra where you can meet with the bus you actually want. Which is what I did, since I wanted to actually get back home.

So, I arrive in town at just before a quarter to eight, and check the timetable for the 38, which shows one having left town at 1940. Grand so, it’ll be here in about ten minutes, and I can be up at Cabra Cross within another five, meaning I’d only have about a ten minute wait for my 70. Ten to eight – no sign. Probably just slow out. Five to eight – nothing. Eight o’clock – still nothing. OK, maybe he’s just around the corner and I can’t see him and it’s been a torrid night getting out. Five minutes past fucking eight (actually 8:04 to be precise) and he shows up, not even half-full. Right, let’s get on and get the fuck up to the top of the road already. If I’d have known it would have taken so long, I probably would have gotten the 122 that went by about ten minutes ago.

A very slow drive to the top of the road, not helped by a bunch of old ladies (obviously a bingo party) getting on halfway, and we reach Cabra Cross – only to see a bus coming from Stoneybatter-way and going ahead. As I was near the back of the bus, I couldn’t make out the number on the back too well (from far away 39 and 70 do look alike), and was seriously hoping that it was the one I didn’t need.
A minute later when we got close to the back – fuckit. It was my 70. The 38 lost those ten minutes to the 70 somehow for some unknown fucking reason on the way to Phibsborough. At least I was hoping that we’d eventually catch up to it while stopped somewhere, or even overtaking it.

Well, that plan got off to a high when the 70 stopped at the next stop up, outside the Navan Road entrance to Coláiste Mhuire (where I used to get on/off the bus to and from Blanchardstown every morning for the last three years of my secondary education) – and was scuppered almost immediately when the guy who got off it flagged down the 38. And it was only made worse and worse, so that by the time the 70 had arrived at the last possible stop I could have changed at – the stop outside St. Brigids GAA Club on the dual-carriageway – we were stuck down the other end, passing by the Phoenix Park racecourse apartments.

So I give the parent a ring asking if she can drop down and pick me up since I’ve no chance of getting back soon – and I get a response saying there’s not a chance of it happening as the place was left in a state and that I should probably just get a taxi back.

Which destined me to at least an hour and a bit wandering around Blanchardstown while I waited for the next 70 to come, which leaves town at twenty past fucking nine. After wandering for said time frame, including getting dinner in KFC since I knew I’d be home late. So, I sit down at the stop at the Blanchardstown Centre at about nine-forty and wait for him to come.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Until at ten past ten, me and two others who had been waiting on it, give up resigned to the fact that the driver was a lazy ass and decided not to to through the Centre, despite that fact that every normal 70 after seven is supposed to go through it since the fucking 270 stops service at seven for some unknown fucking reason, even though it runs all the way through to midnight on Sundays! – and end up splitting a taxi home, which I could have just gotten myself originally, as despite the fact it was split with one of the others in the car, as the other one was only going to Clonee, I ended up paying him full price anyway since myself and the driver were both having a bad night with the maths.

This shit really pisses me off. Really.

Dublin Bus need to get their fucking act together, before I have to write another letter of complaint…

Here’s a copy of my e-mail of complaint which I have just sent off to the Dublin Bus e-mail that they provide on their website, if you want to have a read at all. It’d be a fucking miracle if they actually respond to it though, let alone do anything about it.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to make a formal complaint to Dublin Bus for the treatment I received from the driver of the 2320hrs departure of the Route 70 bus from Hawkins St. to Dunboyne on the 28th October 2009.

I have a mental disability, and am receiving Disability Allowance, and as such I have received a Free Travel Pass, which entitles me to free travel on your services. On the aforementioned journey, when I attempted to board the bus at Dame St. Ulster Bank stop, I showed my Travel Pass to the driver, ensuring that he noticed it and I proceeded to sit down, when I was called back and asked for my photo pass, which I do not have. After answering that I did not have one because I did not need one, I was told that I was “not going back [to Dunboyne] on this bus you’re not”. After attempting to explain to the driver that the documents that arrived with my Travel Pass specifically stated that I did not need one, I was also told that the pass “is useless without the card”. Only after I briefly showed my Social Welfare card and was rummaging through my wallet to pay the cash fare, I was informed “I said you can go on”.

This experience was distressing and embarrassing for myself, as I have almost never had any issues with utilising my Free Travel Pass on any service from Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann, or Iarnród Éireann for the length of time I have had the Pass; and I was also worried that if I was refused travel on the bus, that I would be stuck in town for the night as that particular service is the last service to Dunboyne during the evenings.

After arriving home, I went and searched information regarding the Photo ID for the Free Travel Pass, and I came across the following: http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Publications/SW40/Pages/9DoIneedtoshowevidenceofmyidentity.aspx

In addition, if you live in Dublin, Cork city, Waterford city, Limerick city or Galway city you must also produce a Free Travel Photo ID

As Dunboyne, and thus my address is in Co. Meath, therefore I am not required to possess a Photo ID.

An incident similar to this also occurred within the last month, when a bus inspector boarded the bus I was on and proceeded to check tickets, when I showed him my bus pass, I was also asked for the Photo ID, to which I did also reply that as I am from Co. Meath, I do not require the Photo ID. Only on production of another form of Photo ID was the inspector satisfied.

If the condition is supposed to mean that anyone who lives in the catchment area of Dublin Bus or Bus Éireann city services, then why it is not explicitly mentioned in the condition? Also, why are your members of staff not informed of this fact that passengers from outside of Dublin may not necessarily have Photo IDs for their Free Travel Passes when they don’t need one, and that undue hassle over not having one is unnecessary?

Regards,

Chris Daly

I really don’t want to have any of this shit from them, it’s bad enough that the bus service back in the evenings is a load of shite…

To take an example, Friday night I was going to bed and I set my computer (main machine) to go to sleep. Getting up in the morning, I turned it back on again and went through the day not doing much, however I did not notice my feeds updating with new items despite the fact that I know some feeds ALWAYS update during the night. Sure enough none of the feeds had been updated since last night. Now this was perplexing since I have it set so that my feeds update every 15 minutes (I follow a few heavy-duty feeds, mostly involving cats and food porn). Sure enough, with a manual refresh of the feeds they would start updating every 15 minutes again.

So after it happening to me again this morning, I decided to do a bit of investigating. Checking in Scheduled Tasks, I noticed the feed updating task – User_Feed_Synchronization-{whatever} – was there, but was only set to go off once a day, which is odd as I set feeds to update way more often that that. I checked the time associate with it and it was set to trigger off after midnight TONIGHT. Nearly another full day without feed updating.

I edited the task so that after it is triggered it would repeat every hour, and thought all was fine, until I thought that I may need to set the setting in Internet Options to update every hour as well, which I did. However, I then went back to Scheduled Tasks to find that the task had been changed and set to go off in an hour. Going back and changing the update frequency also changed the time the task would trigger at. This I found to be very odd. After a manual refresh of the feeds, I went back to the task again and noticed that it had been changed so that it would trigger again in another 15 minutes. Now it was clear to me what the story was.

Now since this was only really happening with my desktop and not my laptop, since I always put that into Hibernate, rather than sleep, I went and checked it as well. Looking at the task, I can see it still has the same daily trigger as my main machine set to go off at 1am every day, but it also had a one-time trigger set to go off 15 minutes after the last update. Whether it was this one-time trigger that made it go off and update after I turned my computer back on from Hibernate, I’m not sure.

I’m not sure if it’s a fault in the way the sync program sets up the next sync in the scheduled tasks, a fault in the way the task is set to trigger, or just a fault in the fact I put my computer to sleep at night rather than having it run constantly. I do know though, that it’s fucking annoying.

• My main machine runs Windows 7 Professional RTM on 64-bit, with IE8 32-bit, and Windows Live Mail.
• My laptop runs the Windows 7 RC 32-bit, with IE8 and Windows Live Mail.

Hopefully someone in the proper know will read this and provide a better explanation and why it still does this…

• 11.20: a third of a box of Almond Oats and More

We ran out of milk in the house, so I settled for the old-fashioned "eat straight out of the box without paying attention to how much is actually being eaten". Probably not the best of ideas.

• 14.10: a third of a bowl of chilli beans

Leftovers in the fridge. It was a case of eat them or throw them out. I chose the former

• 16.50: Slevin’s – Tiger prawns in a sweet chilli sauce with oriental veg and boiled rice

Yay for going out for lunch! Food was lovely except all the tails were left on the prawns, making for a very crunchy surprise at the beginning. Fucking expensive though, €17

• 23.05: 5 11 14 17 mini jaffa cakes

They were there. I was craving stuff. Poopy

• 10.05: 600ml bottle of Lucozade, packet of Wine Gums

Sugar rush to wake me up and keep me going for my morning lecture.

• 13.30: Two portions of €2 special offer chicken wings and potato slices

Lunch. I like value.

• 17.45: Two bottles of special-offer 99c bottles of Coke

Needed sugar and caffeine to stay awake…

• 21.35: Packet of Harvest Fare 33% extra free Chilli Nuts

Snack on the very late bus back home. I’m actually quite glad that the bus was very late, since the 11 from college was really slow getting into town. When I saw the masses of people at the bus stop on Dame St., I had some glimmer of hope, but after almost everyone piled onto the incoming 37, my heart sank again.

Thank fuck the 70 came around a few minutes later!

• 11.25: Half a raisin muffin

Mom got one to go with her coffee, since the coffee place in Eurospar were offering coffee and a muffin for €3.50 – which was only 70c more than the coffee itself!

• 12.30: Spicy chicken brown bread sandwich with lettuce, cheese and sweetcorn

On-campus Spar lunch. While expensive, t’was fucking yummy and came with a free bottle of water

• 15.00: Time Out finger, Twix finger, Rowntree’s Randoms; cups of Fanta, Coke, Sprite

Snacks from the refreshments pile at Consoles. It can’t be helped, especially as I’ve technically paid for it until I find Lotta!

• 18.20: Twelve Oreos, Hunky Dorys Cheese and Onion, Kinder Bueno

More STOCS snacks…

• 23.05: Burger King XL Bacon Double Cheeseburger, large fries, large Fanta, medium Onion Rings

I stayed late in STOCS – not by choice, the time completely flew and it was after 9 in a flash – and had to get food in town. Haven’t actually had BK in ages before this, so it was a nice, if very filling and fatty, treat!

• 9.25: Packet of Harvest Fare 33% extra free Chilli Nuts

I have a very weak spot for chilli nuts. I can just sit here all day munching through a bag or two of them and be satisfied. I like peanuts. I like chilli. Together is heaven. At least the Harvest Fare ones are, since it’s the peanut in a chilli shell. Those that are actually just peanuts with a chilli coating are quite a bit spicier and I can’t exactly eat a full bag of them in one shot without some assistance!

• 11.15: Another 1½ bowls of almond Oats and More

Whenever there is epic cereal available, I’ll gladly have breakast everyday – at whatever point in time it happens to be. When there isn’t though, I generally won’t eat.

• 16.40: Cadbury’s Fudge

Went to shop to buy several things that were apparently needed in the house, including more cigarettes for herself. I bought a Fudge while waiting in the checkout queue. Out of the entire €40+ shopping bill, I spent 45c on myself. I’d consider that good, but then again I did end up paying for everything anyway…

• 23.15: Half a bowl of chilli beans with sliced sausages mixed in

Before you ask, no it wasn’t one of those tins that come with the sausages already in it. No, these were actual sausages cooked under the grill mixed in with a normal in of Heinz beans flavoured with an array of spices from the spice cabinet.

Yes, we have an entire fucking cabinet just for spices…

• At some point: Two Three Four SIX packets of Snax

Bought a 6 pack of Snax earlier in Eurospar since they were half price, while I was down there for kitchen roll which had been needed since last night. She gets into a fit when there is anything less than two rolls of the stuff in the press