http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:KrystovArran&section=today deviantART RSS for by:KrystovArran en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:43:22 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/26184956/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/26184956/ Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:00:19 PDT ). I did a lot of BMO questions, which are very interesting and ridiculously difficult. In German we made a brilliant load of props for Der Besuch Der Alten Dame (very, very weird play), and then even better did a puppet show of Goodbye Lenin, which was great.

We found that rounders was much better played with rugby tackling, and Matt and I started working on being awesome doing splinter cell moves (still haven't got the really cool ones sorted, though). Over the weekend we helped out at the scout bonfire-made it and lit it, as well as lots of painting an extension and playing with ancient but very satisfying blades and axes. Did a few decent front flips on the bouncy castle and played waayy too much charades. Monday night I went out and heard Joe's band, who are surprisingly good, and the night was much improved. It's all good.

Climbing weekend was very good, and every day the weather brightened up just in time, and it was very atmospheric walking up the roaches in the mist. Did a few quite difficult climbs, though nothing amazing, and ate delicious bilberry, apple and custard stew, thanks to old lady Abi. 'Broke into' the cottage and went walking in the river in flood, which was great fun, though a bit chilly, and though I lost my sunglasses. Still can't stand on one leg and pick custard creams off the floor very well, though.

Got back and had some very pleasant days, one in Allestree park kiteboarding with Tom, Lukes & al, and one in Darley which was haphazard, getting rained back home, playing cards, and then heading out again. Plus, Thomas has been in Derby, so I've spent many an evening playing backgammon, fixing his knife (which he then gave me as thanks ), and making and eating lovely blackberry yoghurt. Shame about Ernest 'Nuttingham'.

Anyway, I've also got a new bike now, which is very nice shiny and red, and spent ages adjusting it, have fixed my computer so it no longer overheats as badly, done loads of work on physics coursework in the sunshine, trod out a walk for my mum around Hall Dale, and generally been quite productive, when I haven't been sleeping or playing computer games.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/25790963/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/25790963/ Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:01:09 PDT ) in 6 hours, and we won medals and a trophy for being the first mixed gender team back. I always forget how incredible it feels running, especially over the downs in the middle of the night, even if my camel back pissed all down my shorts. So far, nothing in my life beats it. Plus, lots of jumping around and watching a sword swallower Friday night, lots of showing off at circus skills (learning 'suicide' on diabolo), and generally an awesome weekend. I can even still walk.

Yesterday, with enrichment week starting, I was with year 8s, who weren't as irritating as I expected, though there are a few head cases. I manned a checkpoint, climbed a roof and a tree, both to a mixture of consternation and surprise, and got a free ice cream, and that was just the morning. In the afternoon I redeemed my year 9 rollercoaster failure, and working just on my own built an incredibly neat and elegant system and then donated the actually effective part of my design to another group. Finally, I got to choose which design actually won, based on the coolness of the design, and it was blatantly the loop the loop which won it. Then, I got abducted from walking in the rain to an A team meeting and ate lots of snacks in my new Aquila shirt-finally arrived.

The weekend before was a party in the park on the Saturday, which was good fun, with rounders, an incredibly weird martial art consisting of wrestling to clip a crab on your opponent while both of you are hanging off a tree, aerobie, and generally a very pleasant day in the park. That was followed on Sunday with the Wheeldon Avenue party, which was good fun, with far too much food, lots of adults getting tipsy and lots of children needing minding. Ha, I even got payed £5 for helping out and enjoying myself.

Water wars at explorers on the Friday was brilliant-exhilarating even if it wasn't really warm enough, and even if the time spent on water bomb bandoliers and a launcher wasn't redeemed. It included a crazy obstacle course, including half swimming through a flooded boat, and crawling over freshly cut grass when soaked-not the most pleasant obstacle. The week before we were showing off to the scouts, which went well, I think, and I even managed to remember how to play cricket quite well. Plus, a new bouncy castle!-it even has a slide...

Musical performer and dramatic monologue was also very good, though in my opinion the monologues need to be more subtle and understated-there're enough Thespians in the world as it is. You can see why two rounds of auditions were needed for the music-they were all incredibly good, though I think Daniela was far and above the winner. The proper folk singing at the start was also brilliant, and almost made up for death march I'm A Believer. O_o

Sonnenallee was also very good, albeit ridiculously difficult to understand, and that caused some very awkward silences in the workshop at the end. Still, it's all been good, and I even managed to write my two research essays passably well, I think. Unrelatedly, Cambridge was absolutely amazing-Emma is lovely (it has a swimming pool!) and Natural Sciences (Physical) is a great course, which, furthermore, I actually have a decent chance of getting into, I think.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/25376639/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/25376639/ Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:51:42 PDT Even the Chemistry exam wasn't too bad (unlike the Mech exams, plus fire alarm, last week). Plus, I got given a pyromaniac's joy, which was very good for lighting candles, and my 'totally unexpected' trumpet mouthpiece, as well as lots of new very nice music-Eluveitie are truly awesome. Zach Cordon's a bit weirdy, but very pleasant to listen to, especially wandering through the European street market and the library. On that note, I read a pretty good comic, Preacher, though only a few bits are as good as most others I've read, I think. Phillip Reeve's new one, Fever Crumb, is extremely good, albeit read extremely quickly.

Explorers the cub scout fun day was rained off, so we spent an evening lashing poles together in the rain, and the next morning untying them again, and packing them away. Meh, that's life, and at least I got to sleep in a hammock, albeit indoors, and fail at various challenges (you just can't hold your breath while laughing). Then Monday evening, we went on a decent bike ride for Sun Run training, Bradley and Brailsford, with picture postcard views every turn.

Then, the weekend just past, we went down to East Anglia for a sailing regatta, and stayed with grandparents plus dog. Lots of very good food and lots of sitting in the sunshine. A walk around the marshy borders of Grafham water, which are incredibly quiet, and have a wonderful atmosphere, and a lot of climbing on playgrounds around the lake. I got to go out crewing Sunday, but only got one race, and a lot of drifting around the place in low wind. Nevermind, it was still very nice, and I even managed to man over board.

Also, running in Darley Park Monday afternoon in the heavy rain, throwing an aerobie around (chased by dogs), watching Good Bye Lenin, finally finishing all the exams, pretending to be a German businessman for Tradefair, not making too much of a twat of myself, it's all good.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/25090249/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/25090249/ Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:23:20 PDT Then, in the camp itself, I was making sure little scouts and cubs didn't kill themselves, which was, at times, extremely boring, and great at others. Made high ropes easier for a lot of children, and even got called into piggy back duty for one girl. Likewise teaching children how to prussock, which was interesting at first, but then just repetitive. Sitting on the high ropes course was best, slowing children down, stopping them from crashing into the tree, and then sending them on their way. Only had one real mishap, and the girl jumped onto the safety line very happily. Sitting/hanging on the platform in the sunshine, very pleasant.

Overall, the ropes course and all of Aquila's stuff was basically awesome. Best activity there, apparently, and longest queue. Some children were fearless, jumping off the ropes and on again like monkeys, three others wet themselves in fear. It was that cool. Two snapped ropes thanks to massive force on the pulleys (Drum Hill Site Crew were actually useful!), and two sessions out of action, but hey, that's the price of awesomeness. Then, of course, we had to take everything down again. We got everything down surprisingly quickly-lots of "climb tree, untie knot, jump down, repeat". Besides that, I got a reputation as 'epic ninja Chris' thanks to tree climbing, which feels great, and my hammock (thank you Abi) was all too popular. The evenings were good and relaxed, with Becki's birthday one night (too much bad music, but what the hell, still fun), poi, diabolo, lightsticks, and general chatting late into the next morning.

Then, over the next week, I had some good time in the park, landboarding or just sitting there talking, a good walk through head height rape seed plants (I should have brought a machete for some parts ), jumping over gates, sitting in the library (good comic-Love and Rockets/Human Diastrophism. Feels like you're reading Marquez), buying a new trumpet mouthpiece, getting a bus to and belaying scouts up Black Rocks, and generally relaxing, until Sunday, yet another park party! This time mainly playing with ropes in trees, so making a rope ladder, which everyone promptly ignored, being hoisted on the 'safety' line instead. I managed to put a hammock up, 6 metres in the air, which was brilliant, and we got lots of videos and pictures of human pyramids, ascensions of Christs, human baskets, spinning people round by the feet, dive rolls and limbo. All great fun. I just feel guilty about the people who couldn't make it when we changed the date around.

The past two days of school have been pretty dull, 'cause it's just revising, which I'm ignoring, though there've been some interesting number problems, and we're watching Goodbye Lenin in German. Finally, it's my birthday tomorrow!


]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/24804338/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/24804338/ Sun, 17 May 2009 12:06:28 PDT

Much more fun than exams is managing to get out and do stuff in the free sessions and stuff, from flipping people in backflips, to managing a cartwheel to flick flack (still can't do proper tumbling though, 'cause I'm rubbish). Lots of climbing trees, more or less safely, and clambering around in the disused factories, which was really interesting, even if I can't throw knives to save my life. Then, today, doing prep for Spring Bank, with the foundations of the massive 30m bridge and assault course, the prussock tower 10m up (ascenders make it way too easy )

Explorers has been varied, with another bridge in roughly the same place, though unnecessarily taught and only for the hardcore with decent upper body strength, everyone hanging in a tree, and then lots of painting the scout hut with cool symbols and political statements (first time ever that anyone has graffitied "Lib Dems Rule" ), before spending the next day cleaning it all up again, cutting down a tree stump (it took [insert word] ages), and shovelling the ground flat. It is amazing how much better it looks without the old half bricks and broken glass. Then, due to the rubbish weather, a joint meeting with scouts, showing how much better explorers are, climbing ropes, scaffolding one handed, and a sedan bed without the bed bit, or the sedan bit for that matter.

Apart from that: bank stuff (I'm now trusted with a cheque book! ), playing lots and lots of Comptine D'Un Autre; though I still can't play it anywhere near well enough, I think I've done quite well learning it, watching High Fidelity, which is very good (one of the only films that I think it is better than the film), and I've got to go see Coraline soon.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/24511563/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/24511563/ Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:25:27 PDT
Levellers, Tyr and Alestorm all at Rock City in the past week and though I'm bruised and battered it feels incredible. Both times some fuss getting there but only missed a bit of Hobo Jones (their covers of Riverflow and Drunken Sailor were worth listening to ). Both times some pretty damn good pits, though unfortunately with lots of fat drunk half naked ex punks for Levellers. Still, One Way, Dance Before the Storm, Liberty Song, all so awesome. Alestorm the costumes were also great fun, and, well, the inflatable parrot. We shall not see it's like again.

Then, Engineering Education Scheme is finally over and wonder of wonders I have free time and stuff, at least until exam prep kicks in. The 'Celebration' day didn't actually go too badly-no one in the team messed up too badly, and I didn't go mad, mainly 'cause of the nice grounds outside. Plus, lots of free food and drinks. After all that work, though, it feels slightly anticlimactic.

Another nice party in the park, although I think I missed most of it on St George's Day parade. . Ach, well, that everyone else could enjoy themselves is best, and I got some good landboarding and kiting in (hence have got a massive luge scab to go with a twisted ankle). Before that we had a good jam after school, climbed a tree, jumped about, all good-I can only hope for more such afternoons to come.

Explorers has been rather different, with a debates evening (which we won, of course, admittedly because we had the easier side to argue), a "what would you do if London flooded?" "Swimming lessons" bit, driving the downhill racer around the hut throwing balls in boxes (much, much more fun than it sounds), finding a use for being able to stand on Matt's shoulders, and making some pretty damn decent kidney bean sauce.

Oh, and the Royal Society of Chemistry were impressed by mine and Matt's Silver certificates so we may well be going on a chemistry course at Cambridge in the Summer.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/24258201/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/24258201/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:34:00 PDT
So...Patrick's birthday party came and went, with only minor casualties (ie the sofa, which I had to clean). Managed to distill some slightly purer alcohol from rum, using straws, which felt like a success, and Ginseng is absolutely brilliant, especially getting 5 cups from the same leaves. A week later another party at Will's, taking the bus to Beeston and asking directions randomly until someone knew where the nearest pub was (should have thought of that earlier ). Few other people bothered to come, but never mind, we played a hell of a lot of cheat/bullshit/bollocks, and played around in the kiddy's play area.

The Friday before I'd also been in Beeston for tubing at explorers, crawling around in old sewer pipes (minus the sewage ), and that was good fun, apart from unbelievably stereotypical chavs. I think I found all the side passages and interesting bits. The Wednesday before that was my trumpet exam, which I failed, by 2 points. That is infuriating, especially because I should so easily have been able to do better. On that note, I think I'll be playing the trumpet purely for fun for a few months. Matt got a merit though, so good for him.

I've also watched two films-the pretty clichéd Monsters Vs Aliens, although it being in 3D made up for the bad plot, characterisations and jokes, of course. The ping pong ball right at the start was good but after a while you stopped recognising that it was 3D. Also the tremendously bad Knowing. Nicholas Cage has truly sold his soul, this time to alien and eschatology obsessed all American rubbish. It had the potential to be really truly didn't. Meh, playing Vivaldi while the world collapses was good, but the deus ex machina spoiled it. Oh, and the science was crap.

The following week we got the benefit of Martin Landau's 'connections', so Monday we got an ex MoD guy talking about engineering and management, which was quite interesting and he wasn't actually a twat, which was a pleasant surprise. He was quite open about Al Yamamah and even said that he'd been interviewed by the Serious Fraud Office. Anyway, it's more good signs that a technical background is extremely useful. Then, Wednesday, we got a visit to an investment group, ironically called 'Fidelity'. Talked to by an incredibly rich and successful guy, I was just amazed at how much 1.5% commission on the value of the fund, nice corporate lunches, and doing only slightly, if at all, better than the market is taken for granted. Well, we got a free lunch, which just proves that it does exist after all. Shame about the massive journey there and back.

Thursday was another party in the park, this time in drizzle and with few people. Still great fun, with a lovely umbrella testudo, good food and landboarding, and kiting. Then, a really big gust brought Daniela down-broken collarbone. I had to exchange my keys and phone for some icecream to ease the swelling (very unhelpful people in the café, but we got them back eventually. I also landboarded past midnight in the holidays, which felt great, even though we lost the strap and I got only 4 hours sleep before I had to go back and find it at dawn. Yesterday I cycled off to the mystic east along the river, but dropped in at Elvaston castle and spent the time playing bulldog, eating badly cooked sausages, playing cards, and generally having a good time, thanks to Anja. A bit of a rage on the way back, which was over as fast as it came, but it meant I cycled back in about half an hour, beating the bus, which is all good.

As well as all that, we stayed with our grandparents over Easter, played a lot with the dog, ate lots of my grandma's very nice food, and read Far From the Madding Crowd to the 11th hour. Back in Derby I've also been on some very nice walks, one which saw some extremely old graves (a tiny one covered in lichen marked only M.M. was really strange). Then, today, I read a really odd graphic novel, Fountain, and watched a TV play of 1984 in QUAD-good performances, emphasising how hard it'll be to pull O'Brien of well. To finish my Easter holidays off, I went sailing a Pico in extremely high winds-planing with t... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23914430/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23914430/ Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:07:25 PDT For one thing, the weather was almost unbelievably good, even if there wasn't really enough wind for kiting. Awesome guitar playing and Thus Spake Zarathustra at full volume in the open air, though guitar and trumpet just doesn't work (as Wednesday's jam showed again), at least not with such good guitar players and such a bad trumpet player. Plus, tree climbing: thanks, Callum for starting us all off , frisbee, landboarding (no one broke any bones!) and landboarding and guitar playing at the same time. We were, of course, extremely mature, hence the stick fight (far too much Haribo helps ), my faceplant and limbo. Then, on top of all that, massive thanks to Rita Roseback for great food, and lots of it. So, it was all good.

Apart from that, we didn't get loads done, and everyone had to drop out of Watchmen, so maybe this Sunday instead. Still, I went on a few nice walks, we ate vast quantities of hot pancakes at explorers (Lent?-what's that? ), including chocolate, sugar and maple syrup all at once, and Zulu Fire Sauce pancakes. Eating pancakes upside down and on a bouncy castle was...interesting. The past Friday explorers was rather less fun, crawling through all manner of nettles, thistles and bushes to avoid detection, and getting rather lost, but we never got caught, so it was worth it, I think.

In school, I've been to the Oxbridge Conference, and it was proved that Maths is ridiculously picky: "No we don't do Erasmus, it's a year out where you're not doing entirely maths. No, Maths Olympiad tests exactly the wrong type of maths." Never mind, I'm no longer so nervous about paying for it all, and I met someone who's in exactly the same maths/physics position I am, for the third time (after STMC and EES), and who I'm probably never going to see again. As well as that I went to see Frühlings Erwachen, which was very interesting, if ridiculously difficult to understand and done on basically no budget my students who are learning it themselves. Very nice, and talking to the actors was good.

Oh, and I managed to smash a mercury thermometer against the ceiling doing a reflux experiment-very, very pretty, but probably not something to repeat. I've also started to dream in German some nights, which is encouraging, if a little scary . I think that's about it, apart from lots of STEP, infuriating EES, and other rubbish. I'm becoming really rather irregular on this (blame Facebook ).

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23627110/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23627110/ Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:58:36 PDT ). On the other hand, it meant lots of the lifts were closed off for most of the week, so we didn't get to do the longest continuous vertical piste in the world. The whole of Italy was just silent, the entire resort turning into one big off piste area, which was kind of surreal after the crowds of everyone crushed on to the few open runs. We also got three days of brilliant sunshine, skiing in sunglasses, which feels really pleasant.

We were staying in a chalet with a couple who were 'in property' which was a bit . We survived though, though I think my tact bar was used up by the end of the week, especially when they complained about the job the chalet girl, Emily, was doing. I don't care if the meat is a little overdone, so long as I've got enough energy to ski on, and I'm grateful that there is cake made for me at all, regardless of hoe moist it is. Anyway, it could be much worse, and we all got along well enough for a week-no arguments about the responsibility of the Japanese emperor for ww2.

Apart from that I've been doing very little so absolutely nothing in this journal will be of interest to anyone except me. Having all my music mixed up by Windows Media Player-each song being relabeled as an entirely different one which isn't in my library, so I had to listen to each of them and correct them individually. It will never happen again, 'cause I'm now using Mozilla Songbird, which is much better, and looks nice too. I also went on another middle of the night walk, which went kind of bad getting dragged away with metaphysics. Needed a bit of banal everyday human life to drag me out of it before I did anything stupid.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23360545/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23360545/ Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:45:18 PST England just isn't as interesting as Germany, but to be fair, I was trying a lot harder, rather than just sitting in front of a computer typing a journal out . On the other hand, I spent most of Friday teaching year 7s English and German, which was interesting, though I don't appreciate being called "The boy with the curly girly hair" . It hasn't put me off teaching for life, so it's all good, though admittedly we did very little of the actual work.

Also, I've been listening to Kurt's mix tapes, and now like Billy Bragg, and I already knew that Pixies are great. Unfortunately, my nice headphones are non functioning, so I'm using the spares. Meanwhile, I'm writing a story in German about Bastian's exploits in darkest Peru, with the monkey of righteous indignation, Knumpf the ape man, and their battles against the evil capitalist loggers, with Callum and Lisa-good laughs, and the presentation on Sylt.

Friday evening was great, building bridges over the brook (and they actually worked!), going over them by hand, foot and scooter, and climbing underneath the road bridge, no harness. Big iron I girders help rather a lot . Then, watching Superbad (which is funny once I got over how much everyone was an idiot) and 300 (which is just epic), with compulsory pizza. After three hours sleep, a day of first aid course-I think we all learnt quite a lot, even if it was hard to stay awake, plus we played a lot of stick ball (hockey, football and hurling don't really do it justice). Generally, all good fun.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23219957/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/23219957/ Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:33:50 PST So, I've got far too much to write about, but I can try:
As everyone who is likely to read this will already know-it snowed in Derby! On the Sunday we went walking on Kinderscout and Rushup edge in the full 'blizzard' and it really was incredible, especially seeing the water vapour from the railway tunnel freezing out of the air, and forming little ice tubes around the grass.

Then Monday, I spent the day in the snow, walking around town feeling like a Russian in the fleece and trenchcoat, Quad, the library, Tool album: Aenima (Hamish's birthday present), and building a massive disorganised heap of snow in Darley Park. I didn't match the Punk or Snow Lenin, though. Osnabrück also had loads of snow, and we went walking in it, which was very nice, but it's seen as almost normal, everyday, which was really weird. There was snow which looked exactly like Polystyrene, too.

Then, the Senior Maths Team Challenge was cancelled, so we spent the day in London in the Natural History Museum, which is just as incredible every time I go-especially Cortex Man, the Sunday Stone (a stone containing coal deposits every time the mine was working, so you can see the days of the week, weekends, holidays, and so on), the cardboard animation death of the dinosaurs (£1 really well spent!). Then, I managed not to get lost on the trains or plane (go me ) and got to Osnabrück all well.

There's just way too much to go into detail in Osnabrück-the work placement was excellent-Professor Doctor Klaus Kuhnke was really nice and relaxed, and it was exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in, though technical German is really hard (a foot long dictionary helped) and the 9 page report (all in German!) had to be checked by Lina and her mum. On the other hand, I can use it for both Physics and German as well, now.

My hosts the Kassens were really great-I got 5 compilation CDs off Kurt, their dad, they helped me with all my work, and their house, as with all houses in Germany I saw, is absolutely awesome. I was called Arschloch once, by a very rude lady, but on the other hand I got let off the Schwarzfahren fine (travelling with an invalid ticket), met a random grunge loving German guy, had a laugh with the lady at bowling 'cause I don't know continental shoe sizes, and generally had a great time of it.

I also think my German's improved, and I watched the whole of Die Fette Jahre sind Vorbei entirely auf Deutsch (the English subtitles were broken) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, both of which are great films in very different ways (though I still don't like Brad Pitt, and they blatantly stole a good bit from Amélie ), and a Planetarium show which I managed to stay awake through (it was so relaxing in the lie down chair! ).

We went to Berlin, which is an incredible city, and we had one of the best afternoons of my life in the Berliner Dom, the scary woodwork shop, and the Haagen Das café, so big thanks to Daniela, Callum, and Anja. Then, the party at Mattis' was also great, with some awesome guitar playing from both our resident maestros, though Trivial Pursuit died the death it deserved.

We all made and ate some excellent food at the school (though not enough time to eat it all!), and I drank a great cherry, fanta and vodka cocktail (it tasted exactly like Christmas pudding ), before we went clubbing, which was very complicated to get in, but then very simple thereafter-not enough metal , even if they did play 7 Nation Army once. I even lightened up enough to dance to most of it (though definitely not damned Katy Perry or Ting Tings). As a result, we didn't sleep Friday night, and I got to end Valentine's day by 0300 .

Since I got ba... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22923728/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22923728/ Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:17:22 PST I have it better, though, because far more German people (Lina included) speak much better English than we speak German.

Last weekend was fun, going out to see Snow White Saturday evening-thanks to ~harricotfille with the male lead. Shame about the pop music, but I appreciate listening to Rage and Disturbed in the interval isn't to everyone's tastes . I particularly liked the ad libbing when various things went askew, and there were some absolutely classic lines (you know the ones I mean, Abi ). Sunday was Rabia's party, with lots of sitting listening to other peoples conversations (again, worse for Lina), but also meeting new and old people, lots of very nice food and some of Lydia's excellent cake.

Then, Chinese cooking on Wednesday (I've eaten quite enough dumplings for a lifetime ), and Zizzi's once again on Thursday-the German students must think that Derby doesn't have any non Italian restaurants. Shame that we didn't go bowling in the end, but it was all very pleasant anyway, if ein bißchen teuer. Plus, we had fun with fire-you're a bad influence, Alice!

This Thursday I also did the hardest exam of my life-the International Chemistry Olympiad. I think I did quite well getting to the level where I could take it to start with, even if I got the vast majority of it wrong. Plus, the Open University course has finished, with a much easier open book exam. for a good result on both of them.

Finally, explorers this week was pretty damn decent-lots of running around the woods in the dark, climbing cargo nets, chasing people and being chased. [Insert word] scary-I had to wear high vis and blow a whistle while everyone else tried to find you and take you down. Of course, no torch, so it's a case of running as fast as you can without seeing where you're going. Damn good fun, once your heart rate has dropped below 200 a minute. Unfortunately, the game I had to stop a balloon from popping, I tripped over a barbed wire fence. Thigh torn open particularly messily but at least it's a good anecdote.

And now, in my own room once again for a few days, I hope Germany knows what's coming to it.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22755860/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22755860/ Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:18:56 PST
Last week at explorers we entered the world of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and, unsurprisingly, our team came last, adrift in pop music I've never heard of. Ach well, there was an 'air band' section, which was lots of opportunity for metal, and it was still all good fun. <-me

I've also been showing people around Landau twice, for an extra post 16 open evening and the 'induction' of students from Osnabrück. The people I showed round were suitably impressed at the vast amounts of money Landau gets, and just as confused at how it chooses to waste it. Quite good, though we didn't get to set up any Thermite demos or anything. I was also set up to mentor Fran in debating, but thankfully we pulled out of the Oxford Union-incredibly intimidating, and it means I can be here now, wasting my time on the internet .

Cleaning the entire house Saturday, and getting all sorts of junk out of my room, so Lina could stay there for the fortnight, while Matthew puts up with me. Since then, been busy with lots of events, going for a ramble in Dovedale and Tissington (nice hot chocolate) and to Franky and Bennie's (eating lots of nice seafood and excellent brownies, and then downing Tabasco sauce ). Visiting the council house, with its interesting, but rather spooky sound and camera system), which was rather dull (I'm not actually interested in the date when the mayor's chain was bought ), but there was once again nice hot chocolate and food, and we got to miss lots of boring sessions. Then climbing Tuesday, for Maxi Laura's birthday, after frenzied attempts at organisation collapsed, which also involved eating a lot of pizza (all in one!). Looking around Quad Wednesday, which was kind of boring, but never mind.

Explorers was awesome: pushing balloons full of propane over a tea light filled with paraffin, and resultant massive fireball-we all had to retreat into the corners of the room out of its way. Then, making fire balloons (think Hindenburg ), firing burning arrows at more propane balloons, and seeing if Cola and Mentos actually works-unfortunately not with enough force to blow up the bottle, despite our attempts. Vinegar and bicarbonate of soda potato mines were also very effective, as Amy discovered to her cost. All in all, exactly what Aquila is good at, and both Lina and Anja enjoyed it, which is all to the good.

So, yes, so far it's all been very nice.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22541189/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22541189/ Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:54:28 PST ).

As well as that I've had two good weekends in a row, reading Sandman and Nemi (one much more philosophical than the other ), becoming a member of BFI Mediatheque, and watching Ché, which is over 2 hours of watching people shoot things in the Puerto Rican rainforest, reenacting the Cuban revolution. Quite good, but I wanted more on Guevara's earlier life. Plus, free apples from a tree by the inner ring road. This is on top of Trainspotting, which is brilliant, if in a different way to the book, and Amélie, for which a new word has to be invented to describe how wonderful it is. Even the first few minutes are great.

At explorers Friday, we burnt lots of food (the trick is to break it open, hold the burnt crust and chew away the less black bits ) made an actually decent stew/soup, which I was very surprised about, and apart from that ran around hiding, throwing balls at people, and taking people down, all of which is very fun, though I'm feeling the lack of opposition in the form of Pat, Sam and Hamish.

So, what a surprise, 2009 looks to be turning out just as any other year, perhaps a little better.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22327309/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22327309/ Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:58:50 PST I'm not a fan of getting drunk, but nevertheless played the traditional monopoly, and was in the last three (we called quits at 0100 when it was obvious that my dad would trounce us-three of us landed on Mayfair with a hotel ). Only problem was listening to Jools Holland's being struck that an awful lot of the pop music the past year, or at least the pop music they trotted out, has been mediocre at best.

Apart from a bit of climbing with Bailey, Sam, and brothers, and a bit of landboarding in the frost (very pretty), I've basically been lying around eating chocolate and playing Fable 2, which is extremely addictive. Oh, and listening to an awful lot of music, thanks to Christmas. I'm liking Die Apokalyptischen Reiter even more now. Plus, Turisas are awesome.

So happy new year again-let's hope it's a good one!

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22135128/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/22135128/ Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:54:35 PST
Tuesday to Thursday I was in Loughborough Uni for three days. I didn't enter into student life so much as most other people, 'cause I don't see alcohol as the social panacea, but it was still pretty fun-lots and lots of food (even if their apples tasted like [insert word] ). It's only a shame about all the sawdust and solvents that wrecked my throat and nose for the week. We got a lot done though, and I played a lot of minesweeper and Rome, in the all too many times I had nothing to do. Unfortunately, it meant I missed the German Christmas party.

Monday night was also rushed, going straight from engineering to home, back to school again for Presentation Evening, and then managing to walk out mid way through, to go bowling . Thankfully Coffey didn't ask what it was for, and I don't intend to be the one to tell him. Bowling was good, even if I lost (bowling backwards blind does work though ).

The Christmas Concert was excellent: even the dances had quite good music, at least, and the Little Match Girl didn't actually make me want to kill them all, so that's all good. The panto by the year 10s was really good, though I don't think in the way intended-you make a damn good Doctor, Adam (though possibly a better Artful Dodger ) and that put on by year 12 PA was even better-Jono and Billy make excellent trolls and ugly sisters, and we even got free chocolate!

Once again, singers did incredibly well (great work on Lullabies, Alice, thanks ), and the band got decent applause for Summertime (thanks to Stacey) and Ain't Misbehaving (thanks to Lauren, Becky and Simon) especially. Plus, Nick is taking over Coffey's job, thanks to lots of Tequila, Believer and a very fast Sunshine of my Life, and Matt and I have probably become the first people in the world to windmill to Deck The Halls.

Then, after a days rest (ie school), it was off to the Peak District and Christmas Camp. Once again, we got very little sleep, drank bright orange soup, got very, very wet on the Saturday (and had to walk back strung out in a line in the dark and fog), and I bled a lot from Ultimate Fighting Championship. This year, however, we abseiled down Lud's Church, which is absolutely incredible, we finished a slatted bridge across the river, we went on a zipwire over the river, we shot eggs with an air rifle, launched fireworks at a tree, and we almost killed ourselves on the Downhill Racer ("keep right...right...NONONONOTLEFTRIGHT!" ). Less extreme, we managed to charades for three hours (and some people even managed to enjoy it for that long too...), build a model of the Eiffel Tower using straws, shoot each other with 'laser sighted' toy guns and play lots of Twister (thanks, Abi) and I won the grand final!-if very little else . As regards presents, Dave must have got some very funny looks in Poundland buying 25 guns and 25 penknifes.

Since I got back I’ve been surprisingly untired, so took use of it to watch Brothers Grimm and Pans Labyrinth, both of which are very good films in very different ways. Terry Gilliam lives up to his reputation. I’ve also taken apart the watches we got to individual components and put them back together such that they still work!-on to analogue, now…

So, the most important thing remains to be said:
Merry Christmas, or if you don't want to celebrate Christmas just have a damn good time anyway!-we all deserve it. http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21981652/ Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:49:46 PST ), and an extremely chaotic ceilidh (even more so than DFF or Water Aid, which I wouldn't have thought possible). Once again, I danced every set, and apparently kept some children amused as well, so I'd say I did quite well.

In the 'Christmas Spirit' we also did Stamp and Deliver, though it wasn't actually depressing this year as we did it very fast. Last week in trench coat, which kept me amused, and this week too rounds in a row, running up and down (well, I haven't been out running much recently ). So this is not a rant, but rather a thank you to everyone who helped (and to those people who went in and out of apartments just before me, so I could run in before the gate closed).

Apart from that, there's the wonders of Algebra in Further Pure Maths, where you don't need numbers anymore, only greek letters, the trip to Brummieland Thursday, to have a workshop with the Oxford and Cambridge champion debaters, which felt...odd...but meh, it was quite fun, even if there weren't many biscuits. Unfortunately, it meant that I missed the engineering education meeting which we'd been trying to set up all week. In a way I'm glad, because it frees me from some of the frustration.

All this is good, because it means that I don't have to feel the numbness of Saturday night, walking along the middle of roads beneath the streetlights. I don't have to be a ghost, but sometimes, I feel it helps.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21849959/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21849959/ Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:59:27 PST From the looks of it the Peak District was hit deep, though, and we went walking today around Thorpe Pastures, the untouristy bit around Dovedale, which was very pleasant. Lots of very clear sky panoramas.

Last night, too, was walking, with night hike wandering about 10 miles to the east of Derby. Good on Chris and Greg for sticking with it all the way, and to Amy for doing most of it, but it wasn't particularly extreme. Very nice stars, though, walking towards Orion for mile on mile, and even several shooting stars! (though I honestly couldn't think of anything which I wanted to wish for ). Challenges as well, one of which involved being a sheep and bear/monkey farmer, pulling our charges over an icy lake, which was somewhat surreal. Then, after eating an awful lot of crumpets and sweets, we watched Edward Scissorhands, which has reminded me of quite how good Tim Burton can be (it's the little details that count ). Being woken up after less than 4 hours sleep by the A Team theme tune standard, of course.

Throughout the week, I've been doing an awful lot of Engineering Education, making pretty CAD models and not so pretty card models of the front of trains. I also had to weigh bits of paper thoroughly unscientifically for physics coursework, which was very weird and felt rather sad. Anyway, lots of wonderful work to be doing, if I can pull myself away from facebook...

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21725511/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21725511/ Sat, 29 Nov 2008 05:33:34 PST ) and helped to plan out someone's debating speech for them.

Wednesday evening, we went bowling again (thanks to Jono Bentley for the organisation and Pat for the lifts ), and I lost stunningly well, though we won at pool this time. Serious bowling only graced our company once or twice, so winning wasn't important, which was good for me. Thursday loads of people were tramping around Bosworth field (for anyone who doesn't know, the site of the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses), so in German we watched "Das Leben der Anderen", the lives of others, which is an incredible German film, über die STASI, the secret police of the Deutsche Demokraticshe Republik. It is definitely worth watching.

At the quiz night, Thursday evening, we lost to the teachers, but ach well, we had a lot of fun, and did at least passably. Plus, we gave the World Challenge team much needed money, even if they only raised something like 0.4% of what they need. Yesterday was war games at explorers, with the 'British' and the 'Germans' running around Clifton woods, jumping each other, lighting WMDs which looked suspiciously like fireworks, firing eggs at each other (well, pictures of each other-we're not that crazy ) and hiding in shelters from water bombs. Fun!

Anyway, I have just joined the wonderful monstrosity that is Facebook, so I'm obviously on the slippery slope that leads to spending all my life updating various profiles (oh, I'm there already, aren't I ).

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21628247/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21628247/ Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:48:25 PST
Tuesday evening, went on the ESU Mace trip with Landau, to watch our team beat a load more private schools at debating. Congrats to Hannah and Alex, who did damn well-utterly unflustered. Meanwhile, I got to ask killer questions, make silly faces, and basically intimidate the other teams-I actually managed to say "Throughout your argument you've made several post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies" without bursting into laughter. I felt kind of bad supporting globalisation for the purposes of the argument, but at least the position has a lot of merit, unlike "Same sex marriage is morally wrong" (destroy proposition 8! ). Anyway, Alex Bailey was there, again, arguing for the legalisation of cannabis, the second time in a week, after nothing since Bloodstock, which is something of a coincidence (or not really, when you bring selective reporting &c into it). It's been nights like that (14 hours without eating anything), which have made me shattered the past week, so I've apparently got to go to sleep earlier, so as not to incite further concern from teachers.

Explorers was scouting for dummies, so being set loose with the felling axe, and other axes and saws, which was, predictably, good fun. Likewise, lots of climbing ropes, prussocks or not, pretending that a ladder was a 50 foot rock face for the purposed of safety checks, and singing Nelly the Elephant while pummeling Resuci Annies (it really is a happy coincidence that it is the right tempo and number of beats for CPR ). Although apart from that I've just sat around playing Halo and reading through my OU Short Course (did you know a parsec was roughly 3.3 light years, or that there was just under 1000 kms^-1 in one Megaparsec per billion years?

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21516233/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21516233/ Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:38:03 PST
First, Wednesday, we beat Ecclesbourne, and Derby High, and every other school in the region at maths. Most of the questions weren't particularly hard, but it was a matter of being fast, and being accurate, and we managed to do those well enough in the first two rounds that even though we crashed in the third, we had a decent lead. We were genuinely surprised, but we've now got a trophy and will be going to London for the Nationals! (except I might be in Osnabrück at the time ) We also got lots of goodies, including a rubber penguin (which Bailey, who I also met at Bloodstock, gave AIDS, apparently ) and great quantities of biscuits.

Then, Friday, Matt and I felt like the gods of Landau Forte, with the Matrix Twins costumes. The braiding took far too long, and the white hair spray didn't really work, but the time was definitely worth it, and the sunglasses and trenchcoats made it sheer awesomeness. We didn't raise as much money as the Oompalumpas or the Geishas-I don't think the old ladies understood it, but we got enough compliments and recognition (even from Dave! ) that it cancelled out. Plus we got lot of photos, which will certainly be going up as soon as I get hold of them. Children in Need as a whole was pretty good, and I ate the usual glut of sugar (though not as much as two girls who I made cups of literal melted chocolate for -my tutor base was on the chocolate fountain).

I've also been climbing, though the cube was unpleasantly wet-reach for a perfect hole, and it's full of cold water , played around with a very nice CAD model of the front of a train for EES, and at explorers crawled along two slack ropes-tiring, to say the least-as well as making bad caricatures and comedy sketches. I also sat through the GCSE awards ceremony, really wishing I was somewhere outside in the moonlight instead, but ach well. Anyway, yay: we're cool!

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21422415/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21422415/ Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:15:36 PST

I've been set as the tutor base Operation Christmas Child organiser (despite my belief that it's easy gratification rather than useful aid), so I've had to pester people to bring in anything they can think of (mainly pencils ), and I've also been going through preparation for the Senior Team Maths Challenge, most of which seems to be rather easy, and some of it ridiculously difficult, but it feels so neat when an answer works. Thursday, I went to Litchurch Lane to look at trains for Engineering Education-the sheer size of the jigs they use is incredible (20 tonnes!), and narrowly avoided the corporate video.

The weekend was rather more interesting, with bonfire building Saturday (after Matt and I opened yet another bank account, under duress-there are 5 now, at 4 different places ). We made a massive pile, especially in height, and above it we placed the four armed, pink clad, Santa bearded guy with the face of Tom Jones, crucified on a 6 point (Russian Orthodox ) cross, and pierced through the heart with a lance. He really did look like some new twisted messiah, with such a serious expression I almost felt guilty. We'd made him Friday evening, along with sickening toffee, and lots of wrestling. Pat took down Dave!

Anyway, because of all the work we did we were Aquila SIPs (self important people ), wore High Vis, and were on the bonfire 'safety team' (ie, we had some buckets of water near us). We got to light the bonfire!-it felt good holding massive burning brands. Sparks have given me nice patterns of burns, though. The fireworks were also amazing, better than the Markeaton ones in that there were loads of them, and they were right above us-you could get the feel of them as properly 3D. They were also a lot larger than our own display on Wednesday night, which made up in silliness for what it lacked in power.

Sunday, we had to go to the second of the scout obligatory church services, for Remembrance. I'm just really annoyed that a. they've hijacked great music with religious dogma lyrics and b. they spent two hours on a normal Church service, and 5 minutes on the actual remembrance. I won't rant here, though. In the evening, we went bowling with the two Jonos, and I even managed to win a game!-though Levers won the other two. We were soundly beaten at pool, though.

Finally, today I went to the debate on Nuclear Power, and it was so, so hard not to jump up at every second sentence and correct little mistakes-it's just the little details which bug me. More importantly, though, it's the 11th of the 11th tomorrow. Let's all remember that life is worth something...

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21267512/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21267512/ Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:13:40 PDT Monday was a great example of my organisation, in texting, emailing, etc lots of people, and arranging a day which most people could make, and then various things coming up and having only five people there. Next time, I will have to find a way of feasibly carrying you from Littleover, Alice. But anyway, it was generally very nice, extremely relaxed, and everyone went on the landboard (thank you!), even if there wasn't enough wind for powerkiting.

This week I have also made an apple cake (even if it is too moist), been to the library again, wandered around town to buy white powder (not an illegal substance, honest ), and were sent from Boots to Superdrug to the Joke shop by very helpful shop assistants (so, despite them not reading this, thank you). I've also cycled to Oakwood and back in order to play lots and lots of Halo, and watch Family Guy, at Jono's. Cycling back was a lot easier, due to the massive hill down to the river, though Jono thought we were mad, especially cycling in the cold with two buffs, gloves, sunglasses, and no skin showing. In the evening, we cycled again, to Normanton and back, to go climbing at Alter Rock, which was fun (I wouldn't spend £7 on it if it wasn't ), and then to Sam's house for a while.

Thursday and Friday, Patrick took much needed days off work, and so very kindly drove us up to the Peak District on Friday, where we did the usual clamber and wander on the top Kinderscout, but in the snow!-it was all the better being unexpected, and it was really, truly beautiful. The clear definitions between the peat and the snow, and the bright sunshine reflecting off it... We sat on a rock in the middle and ate a picnic in the wind, which felt very good. We didn't manage to go round Rushup Edge, but nevermind.

Unfortunately, due to taking a long route back via Chesterfield, we missed the Wheeldon Avenue Halloween celebrations (I'm constantly amazed that our street has any sort of organisation, never mind such an enthusiastic group), but even without a costume, it was very good to see so many people enjoying themselves-the street was absolutely packed at some points. Then, at explorers, we made a very detailed pumpkin (taking twice as long), launched eggs, whipped the other teams at apple bobbing, asked to take photos of random strangers in costumes (most people were very obliging, though one little girl ran away-it was obviously Matt asking ), played Buzzcocks intros with Matt (liking the same songs helps ), which felt much better than the ‘rave’, and watched the IT Crowd, which gets ever so slightly wearing after the first three episodes .

Today was also great-destroying a caravan in order to strip it to the chassis, going at it with a sledgehammer and determination! Shame that it takes longer to clear up the mess than to make it. Plus climbing a tree with harnesses and straps in order to saw branches off while avoiding the hut-when a branch comes off to plan the feeling is great. Great fun! Finally, Markeaton Park fireworks!-which on the whole weren’t as good as past years, but some of them (whirlies!) were better. Overall a great week.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21172430/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21172430/ Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:55:22 PDT

I've been climbing (at Arboretum, because I don't have any cash at the moment, ), kite flying (twice, though we didn't get any wind the first time), watching die Fälscher at Quad (a very good film, even though I had to use the subtitles), to the library again, to Derby Traditional Music and Arts Festival (why don't they just call it Derby Folk Festival?), and down to Cambridge for the weekend, as well as having a Halo night, starting and finishing Portal (great game ), and I've also spent an awful lot of time just sitting in the sun, such as Tuesday's reading of Strange Pilgrims (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) as the light fades, moving from bench to bench in town to keep out of the shadows.

In no particular order, Derby Folk Festival was this weekend, and though I could only go to the Friday it was plenty good enough. I didn't kill anyone at the ceilidh!-I didn't even knock anyone over, even when Matt and I did arm wrestling gipsy, and swinging 'with gusto'. It's too early to say that I'm getting better (sample of 2), but meh, it's very fun. Plus, after some odd folk dancing (not Morris, but suspiciously reminiscent), there were Bellowhead, which were very good, in a fun way. The way each of them seems to play at least two different instruments is very impressive, and it makes the texture great, though I still think the solos are what makes it (bagpipe solo! ). Also a very good band to dance around to, even though I can't do a backflip as Sam can, or kick my legs above my shoulders as Abi can (you're allowed to show off, I guess ). I can see why they're your favourite band.

Monday night Jono Bentley and Levers came over, and we played far more Halo than is good for us, playing as a team against people on Xbox Live, which was very fun, though some of them are very good. We were, of course, listening to metal, and played a King of the Hill game appropriately named Mosh Pit...to Raining Blood (and Angel of death for variety ). It was some of the most hyped minutes of my life, which may be kind of sad, but was very fun, especially as the music ended at exactly the right time, and, all in the small hill, we only started when the riff kicked in. WARGH!

This weekend we went down to Cambridge, first for the Bruce family get together meal, now at a pub in the middle of the fens (argh, so much flatness!). Very good food (especially the mushrooms), all the more so as I got to eat everything which other people couldn't finish. Also spent lots of time amusing younger cousins (not particularly hard, but fun nonetheless). Then we went to our other grandparents, and spent a day being fed lots of very nice food, homemade apple juice and wine, playing with the easily excitable boxer dog, showing off on diabolo, and generally having a really nice time.

This week I've also read too many books: Chocolat (Joanne Harris), Feet of Clay (Pratchett), Alice Through the Looking Glass (if you don't know, it's a crime ), Hitler's Canary (Sandi Toksvig), and now Midnight's Sun (Stephanie Meyer) to read, or at least to try.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21063473/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/21063473/ Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:50:14 PDT
First, today has been Apple Day, and hence Markeaton Park has had an awful lot of stalls and lots and lots of apples. After I turned up too early and went on a nice walk around the park borders, I was enlisted to help out taking money off small children (which is a fresh feeling of guilt each time ) in exchange for toffee apples, before we sold out and I helped to make apple pigs (which are very strange-I'll have to demonstrate sometime)) and other weird and wonderful creatures out of apples and cocktail sticks. I also wrestled small children (or rather stood there while they tried to take me to the ground, and then tried to stand up again-great fun, for me as well ), was shown up at diabolo big time by Olly, drank lots of apple juice (including freshly crushed, which tasted as though I'd just eaten 5 apples at once ), and generally had a good time (though playing rubber band chicken against Sam wasn't so fun-he always lets go first )-making other people happy, or even just being near other happy people, is always a kick.

Yesterday night was the Big National Ceilidh-ask ~harricotfille if you want to know more, with a big thankyou for making it such a great evening. Arigato, your dance mat prowess is now thoroughly eclipsed! It was great fun, though a very different mood to metal gigs-silly happy rather than hyped happy, especially seeing as I ended up dancing in the ladies' position much of the time (even stranger, dancing the ladies' position with a female partner in the gentlemans' position, but meh, so it goes... ). I can't profess to be anything other than clumsy, confused and slow, but it was my first time, after all, so hopefully I can improve, and I only knocked one person over .

Earlier on Saturday, I went to the British Film Institite Mediatheque at Quad (the only one outside London) and watched old films of Tibet, coloured or black and white and with or without sound (mostly black and white and soundless, so my ears felt really strange when I heard the first sound for half an hour ) for an hour-the place is quite incredible, and I only just shaved the surface of what they've got. The installation is also very cool, with over 8 images from three projectors. Plus, I went into the library, though I'll have to head back later in the week to see if they've got Love in the Time of Cholera.

Explorers was custard at Drum Hill, and thus interesting, taking custard round the assault course, trying not to spill any (so slow!), balancing on beams in order to get custard creams und so weiter. I'll remember the game of bulldog at the start, with everyone hanging on to me as I tried to slowly crawl towards the end, feeling like a zombie shoot 'em up . Thursday was also a very good day, with the Engineering Education Scheme launch: lots more free tea and biscuits, some annoying personality test things and planning exercises, and a team challenge, where we weren't allowed just to sloth it out over the 'river' to pick stuff up from the middle . I'm going to be part of a team designing the casings for the couplings on trains, which are going to be on the new Voyager trains if they're any good (not as cool as a satellite, but still good ).

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20952680/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20952680/ Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:00:43 PDT
Explorers was good fun: lots of random computer games and twister, and indeed a mix of both of them (Twister Moves-which is such an incredibly patronising game it's just funny, though I still think there needs to be a metal version, with commands such as 'windmill', 'hug a random stranger', and 'MOSH PIT!' ). I didn't win any of the twister, but I didn't expect to, but I did win quite a lot of Halo, which I did. I liked the set up for Grand Turismo, which was set up in Dave's car, so you sat in the front seats and looked at the screen set up in front of the windscreen. Plus, being absolutely amazed by ~harricotfille on dance mats -you really are scarily good. At least Jono Bentley's got his grade 8 guitar playing as a reason for being incredible at Guitar Hero...

Saturday evening we went to Café Harmony in it's both opening and closing weekend . The food and atmosphere are both really, really good (such as upstair's 'Opium Den' ) with some nice folky flute duets while we ate massive bowls of wonderful soup and great chocolate cake (though we'd already had some of Patrick's Saturday afternoon) and truly incredible vegan icecream-as in about the best icecream I've eaten, soya or not.

Sunday we were pushed off sailing, and I'm now glad of it, because although there was very little wind, and the water wasn't warm, it was a nice sunny day and bobbing about in the bright yellow Pico was very relaxing. I pointed the boat upwind and sailed it backwards down half of Carsington (~a mile ) and scarily, it was at times faster than sailing forward. Plus, Pat brought his MP3 player out so Matt and I sang along to Captain Morgan's Revenge while sailing. The safety boat only noticed that I'd forgotten my buoyancy aid after I'd been out for two hours.

Yeah, so, I think that's about it-lots of STEP for me to do, and 10 German irregular verbs to remember. Wünderbar...

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20825979/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20825979/ Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:25:41 PDT _{found this-thought it was appropriate}
Came back Friday night, though it has felt like it was all a weekend, from wonderful balmy Glasgow, where Matt and I have been at the International Astronautical Congress (astronautical=moving around in space, rather than just looking at it), where once a year a ridiculously large amount of incredibly skilled and experienced people gather, with ridiculously expensive and specialised pieces of kit. We were there for a satellite competition, where we designed an experiment with a budget of £100 000, to actually go into space for 5-8 years (über ). Unfortunately, we were beaten by Shrewsbury School, which looked like the poshest of the 6 finalists, with everyone in three piece suits, and one guy even in a scarlet waistcoat as well , proposing an experiment with some actual commercial value, rather than our academic only approach. Ach, they doubtless still deserved it, though I'd like to see the other team's proposals in detail (you can see ours here if you're slightly interested).

Anyway, whether we won or not it was amazing, and we looked around lots of extremely complex promotional stuff and got loads and loads of freebies, and we may well be given membership of the British Interplanetary Society and a high resolution photograph of any part of the world we want, viewed from space (so please, has anyone got any suggestions?). Everything was payed for by the BNSC, but strangely it was only us who went up for seconds of the free buffets, and the very, very desserts (I've had between 6 and 8 free cups of tea ). Plus, we had the run of the Glasgow Science Centre at 11 at night, watched a very good planetarium, and listened in to a Q and A session with 4 astronauts. Basically .

We did have a few problems, though. The hotel overbooked, so we wandered around Glasgow for an hour (which was surprisingly nice, especially one incredible view over the Clyde and Glasgow skyline towards sunset), before getting moved to a much better one. Plus, we nearly did a Newport, chasing the last trains down the east coast until we dried up in Sheffield. Never again!

The night before we left, Wednesday, was also incredible, going to see Dragonforce and Turisas play in Nottingham. We had to wait ages outside and inside before they came on (and until then we all shouted 'Metal!', 'This is Sparta!' and suchlike at random intervals) but it was definitely worth the wait. Turisas ranked up there almost with Eluveitie in terms of performance, with an electric violin (though it wasn't quite as nice as yours, Alice ), on which he played Reign In Blood! Dragonforce were better than I'd been led to expect, with ridiculously technical guitar playing, and a drum set with at least 12 cymbals! I was ridiculously hot by the end, and so dehydrated that white circles appeared behind my eyes. Jono is now the proud owner of one of Herman Li's picks, thrown off and replaced mid song. The gig ended in style-I never thought I'd see the day when there was a mosh pit, and even a Wall of Death, for Dragonforce.


_{Note for myself: I should have a doc of the full length journal}

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20702794/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20702794/ Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:17:39 PDT

Anyway, politics aside, the whole event was very impressive, with the sheer number of people in Derby (~5000 in the square at one point I'd say) attesting to that. The lampshade dancers, including Jono and Nick, were slightly spooky, the Giants of Derby figures were very funny (and Pat got to play the drum in the parade ), and the insects were absolutely incredible. I like the spider (which will give 5 year olds nightmares for weeks), and the ant, and the grass, and the vicious venus fly trap, and the glowing centipede, and the tree devouring praying mantis, and basically the entire thing.

Hyped on bright lights and flares, and smoke and loud garage music, running from the front of the parade to the back, dodging split second all the people and bikes and bus shelters. Unfortunately, there were too many people who were, in short, too British to do anything other than stand on the edges of the road and quietly watch, rather than join in. The heliosphere was good as a novelty-it would be rather fun to have a small one, and there was a great moment with the pyrotechnics, where a massive one went off on Quad, while we were standing by the windows on the top floor, and everyone in the square stared up at us and clapped-I felt like a true messiah.

Other reasons to be happy include glorious weather, which seems to be trying to make up for the rainy summer, and ripe blackberries in abundance (though the biggest of them are the most unripe), a very nice walk through Nutwood nature reserve along the river, and a happy cube, which Anja gave me-I'm going to have to make something in return now.

On the other hand, I hate the drama piece which the group is doing at Christmas. Not only is it rather cheesy physical theatre, it's Hans Christian Anderson's "it's all okay that the match girl dies in pain and alone, and that her family are left to die even more slowly and starve, despite this being easily preventable, because God loves her". I'm just going to have an extra hour free after school until the new year. Oh, and I've finished Pride and Prejudice, and find the characters at the end generally much improved from the beginning (which I presume is kind of the point), though I still only really like the cynicism of Mr Bennet. I think ' perceptive' is the best praise I can truthfully give.

Addendum, circa Sunday night (Monday morning by now). Too much Further Maths out of the way, but German left to do tomorrow. The Fest events have continued to be very good, with a person hanging off a digger, and the Heliosphere woman hanging off ribbons suspended from the ceiling, both of which look like great fun , albeit with annoying vibrato singing for the digger. Plus some people dressed as American tourists singing happily away with double bass and accordion, and three incredible African acrobats. To cap it all off, they burnt sculptures in the river gardens, which, though not as explosive as I'd have liked, was beautifully orchestrated, the reflections in the river especially-a symphony on cello and fire. Apart from that, lots of playing around with Spore Creature Creator, which is very silly and great fun.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20602095/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20602095/ Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:48:54 PDT ) I can still use them well. I should be able to do the same tomorrow morning, so once a week is decent.

Thursday, drama was 'interesting', with lots more trust exercises, such as going round a very basic assault course blindfold (I'm pleased by the compliment I got of being 'fearless' in that ), and then played trumpet for the year 6s open day, though it was the singers who did most of the work, and accordingly got most of the applause. I also listened and sung along to an awful lot of Captain Morgan's Revenge, which is a great song, especially for International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Operation Drop Off on Friday evening was fun, and Team God (minus Pat and Sam, and Hamish replaced with his equally capable sister) delivered a fresh display of how great we are, walking more than 4 times the distance of anyone else, and not getting lost! (though it seemed close jumping over two streams) If you really have forgotten it as predicted, Abi, you should at least remember the electric fence. Plus, far too many sweets.

Saturday we went on a walk in the Peak District, on a route scarily memorable from DoE Bronze, and wandered through lots of nice pretty north Derbyshire in the sunshine, and had icecreams, and generally thought what a wonderful place England when the weather isn't actually rubbish. Today I've done a lot more sitting about in the sun and doing far too much German homework (though 'Music in my life' is a very good topic). Oh, and because Matt and I did well in the Royal Society of Chemistry 50 years exam (16th best in the country!), we're being mentored via Skype, and generally prepped for the Chemistry Olympiad, so I'm feeling very proud.


]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20489023/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20489023/ Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:33:05 PDT ). Running with Matt and ~harricotfille (thanks to cancelled DoE, due to nonexistent awful weather), we were eligible for, and won in style, retaining for another year, the under 18s' Kinder Trophy-the Stick!-with a time of 4:17. I'm coming to think of it as ours now. Not only that, but Pat and Sam, running with a guy called Tom, won their under 25s' category as well, so Aquila ESU won every category it entered. It is, as Abi's new t shirt says, amazing.

The run was very nice, with an incredible view looking off the edge of and back over Kinder (whirls of cloud sitting on top and spilling over slowly into the valleys below ) and loads of spider webs, shining with dew. It was a lot more wearing than I remember, especially with cramp* (though it was worse for Abi, and even worse for Pat), but no painkillers were needed . We ran almost the whole of the last section, thanks to some serious pushing from Abi-my vision went black after the finish, so we certainly pushed ourselves hard.

_{*After looking it up quickly, one of the problems might be lack of calcium, which also causes cramp . Apparently one solution is to eat more potassium, so bananas all round}

I still feel very worn out, despite going to sleep, and the first bath I've had in years (anticipating smart alec comments ), which may be due to how little sleep I got Friday night, thanks to Cardboard Castles. For those unfamiliar with the idea, one builds a structure out of cardboard, sleeps in it overnight, and then destroys it in the morning. The first two worked very well, with a very slick castle (mainly thanks to the by then sodden cardboard ), though I skipped the 'rave'.

Unfortunately, some absolute twits/[insert worse] from Titan decided to jump on the castles and flatten them into heaps of sodden cardboard before we had the opportunity to: throw javelins at them, build siege weapons to destroy them, set them alight with flaming arrows, and all the rest of the interesting destruction. Dave's lucky find of historical reenactment spears was almost completely wasted. Never mind, Aquila made a lot of money from it, so we can enjoy some other good stuff now.

Friday's Roald Dahl day celebrations were very nice, with lots of naive and enthusiastic year 7s looking up to us with respect and the rest of it (though despite Olly being called 'Mister', and Alice 'Miss', I only got Chris ). It went better than I expected, and almost everyone I was in charge of wrote at least one poem, of vastly varying quality. Choosing who to give the prizes to was torture, though. Plus, there were spare meringues: thank you ~Aliwoo!

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20423030/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20423030/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:20:28 PDT !

Induction was pretty much the relax I expected, apart from the seemingly endless mini lectures we sat through on 'study skills', 'what is expected of year 12s' and other [insert word], giving me metal withdrawal symptoms by the end of the day. More people from Landau than I expected, but also loads of new people (unfortunately several of them seem to have read the Telegraph articles on GCSE results at Landau ). For an extra bonus, quite a lot of new people seem to be metalheads.

The Friday Night Project of Aquila ESU has begun once again, with Ultimate Fighting Championship kicking everything off to a mindlessly violent start (the rush you get from standing there surrounded by a circle of people hitting you as hard as possible, albeit with pillows ), and I fulfilled the requirement of shedding blood, though only a carpet burn. Plus, I beat Sam in a straight wrestle, which I'm happy with.

Saturday was also very good, all thanks to ~harricotfille. Though I did have strong doubts about sitting down to paint pots with 15 year old girls (and yes, that was misogynistic), Paint a Pot was great, though painting Sauron's eye probably doesn't bear well on my sanity. Plus, I won twister!-which I don't think I've ever done before, and against tough competition too. It almost makes up for losing at scrabble... Oh, and we also ate fruit dipped in melted dark chcocalte, which is kind of decadence condensed into one meal, and I learnt that Bill Bailey is even better than I thought he was (hats off to the zebras everyone )

Since then, I've had very long days, seeming at least twice as long. I've had every major subject now, and I've enjoyed the majority of it, though I've got far more homework than before (most of it German). Tutor times seem to consist of Mr Dobson ranting and complaining about anyone else ranting (apart from when he's asking me to rant about particle accelerators), Maths looks to be easy (though surd jigsaw was surprisingly fun), and Further Maths (a class of 7 people now, incidentally ) looks to be...interesting (working out how Matrices work through experimentation today, and I expect harder to come). The main difference is that sixth form has so much more freedom-for instance yesterday, instead of having a supply lesson, we were just told to go home and research some stuff for next lesson. Likewise, I can take time off in the middle of the day to randomly wander (did you know, the weird gadget place in town has an electric skateboard in stock‽ ).

Carnegie is gearing up for Roald Dahl day-I'm going to be in charge of a group of year 7s making rhymes, which should be quite fun, though slightly frustrating. In a similar vein, I have to say a big thank you to ~Aliwoo for the meringues, which were very, very nice. I expect that a few year 7s may not want theirs, eh?

Hmm, it's a monster-I should have found the time to type this up a while ago.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20309714/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20309714/ Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:09:25 PDT I have to wear uniform again, though at least a suit is better than a blazer. On the other hand, I've survived until sixth form, so it should be at least interesting.

Anyway, a good final week, I think, from Jono coming around Saturday, with landboarding (dodging the portaloos), eating very nice blackberries (they're just coming ripe, so go out and pick as many as you can! ) watching Darley Abbey cricket and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which really isn't as good as Life of Brian), and playing lots, and lots of Halo. It makes me wonder whether xbox live would be worth it, but then again,not for Team Fortress, which we spent about an hour getting utterly confused by. For the rest of the week I've been periodically acting as a skull location consultant, though I have to say I'm not much use.

Despite the almost ceaseless rain, I've kept vaguely busy, climbing at Arboretum on Tuesday, failing yet again at the traverse, but managing a few I haven't before, and doing 6 laps of the monkey bars (Floyd, aged 6, can do about 50 ). Wednesday Matthew and I went into town and played squash. After I thought I'd lost my wallet and ran back only to find, relieved, that I'd forgotten to pack it, and then found out the library was closed and spent the hour and a half wait in Waterstones instead (A Spot of Bother really is good, or at least the first 100 pages are , and I also discovered a 600 page His Dark Materials Companion, written by a professor who presumably has too much spare time and wrote about almost every philosophical concept the books raise), we had a few good games of squash, though Matt beat me on most of them-it's an incredibly tiring game, especially considering how little distance you move.

Oh, I also watched a very good BBC drama in the evening, God on Trial, which I'd definitely recommend you look up on the iPlayer, no matter what position of faith you hold-it explores the Jews of Auschwitz, believing, disillusioned, or atheists, as they try to come to terms with the horrors and what some of them see as the breaking of God's covenant with Israel. Very moving, and very deep questions.

Anyway, I can only hope that year 12 lives up to my expectations.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20202213/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20202213/ Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:29:54 PDT
Climbing club restarted with the nice weather Tuesday (albeit with not very many people) but that didn't stop it getting dark too quickly, but there was time for some good climbs anyway, and tramping about lost in the undergrowth in the dark, which rather than making us feel like idiots for forgetting our torches, made me feel surprisingly extreme.

Sitting here on a new, very impressive chair, with a new desk, lit by a new lamp, and with quite new speakers and a not so new laptop, my room is suddenly looking a lot sleeker and more 'rofessional', not that I have a profession for it yet. It also meant that, with a higher desk than normal, I split my forehead open headbanging, so I feel like an utter [insert word]/fool. The third time I've split my forehead open this year, as opposed to none before that, so .

Anyway, the main reason I'm writing: I went walking, went on the swings at Darley park, which was relaxing, and around the newish nature reserve between Allestree, the A38 and the river, and was struck by how beautiful it is. The first time I went there, a few years ago, it was beautiful, but bleak, and now that it's got funding and volunteers and official status etc, it's almost indescribable-it feels like it is miles away from any city. Plus, there are lots of ripe blackberries there.

Then, I went to the library, was looked at slightly strangely for sitting on the floor in the children's section, and then read Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is the reason for the title, because the book is truly both. To explain the title, it's the narration of a 90 year old man who, looking for death, finds the first love of his life instead. It makes me want to read Love in the Time of Cholera next.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20132224/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20132224/ Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:35:17 PDT
I got a new desk Thursday, which we assembled with great gusto, and then went climbing at Wirksworth in the evening, a short but very intense hour, managing some V3s and trying a V4, which I'm proud of. I'd have preferred to stay longer, to be honest, but I'm not going to hold anyone else going back (especially seeing as Patrick had control over the car ). Friday, we spent playing LEGO, which is possibly the best toy of the past century (I think it was voted as such by someone or other), and making very weird comic thingies, such as Patrick's monopod buffalo.

Saturday, went down to Norfolk with explorers, camped with an entire scout campsite to ourselves, and spent most of the day at Hunstanton, building a massive and intricate system of dams (with Minas Morgul in sand, which was fun ), working to build an absolutely giant sand castle; the moat was (and presumably still is) half a metre at deepest and widest, down to the water table all the way around a circle of ~3m diameter. By this point, we kind of forgot about the castle, so just built a large heap of sand in the middle, with a bucket shaped mound on top.

Statutory fish and chips, walking along the beach while other people played on the arcades, 3 slides for £1 (bargain!), and jumping in the rather mucky and chilly sea (and Dave bursting a newly bought inflatable dinghy by front flipping onto it ): the usual seaside trip. Unfortunately it wasn't windy enough to kiteboard, but later we got to get everyone power kiting and very slow landboarding. Eating far too many very bad hot dog sausages and sitting in front of a large fire, it was very good.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20008464/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/20008464/ Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:00:34 PDT
It was absolutely incredible, awesome, and probably epic as well. Honestly, I do not believe there are enough swear words in existence to describe how [insert word] great it was. I'm not hardcore enough to get the full camping ticket, so went down on Saturday, with a bus all to myself down to Burton on Trent (slightly surreal), another to Barton turn, and walking about an hour to Catton Hall, warmed by my glow of moral pride, or alternatively smugness, at saving that little bit of carbon. Surprisingly, nothing went wrong, so I was there much too early, surrounded by the hungover and the simply dead, but still, I was there.

There's so much to rant about: ~phantomward was a great guide, all thanks to him. It was great to see a band that really didn't take themselves too seriously in Evil Scarecrow, probably the only band for which the robot dance will hit a metalfest, and with great homemade costumes. Likewise, Metalloid were absolutely incredible, deserving the main stage, though if I'm deaf aged 30, they've played a large part in it (power drive!). I don't think Moonsorrow got quite the reception they deserved but Eluveitie (pronounced eluwety I now know) were absolutely amazing, both musically (hurdy gurdy, violin and bagpipes! ), and in performance-I now know how to say "pretty girl, bring me a beer" in Gaelic, not that I'll ever use it. Then, there was Dimmu Borgir.

I got a proper moshing wound at Eluveitie, someone's spiked wristband or something-carried on moshing regardless though.
It was good for some approving looks, and even a little bit of jealousy. Fortunately, a guy Nick was camping with had an antiseptic stick, and I was probably high on the adrenalin, or I've got a high pain tolerance to thank.

Moshing ranged from the day's first, small, pit at a surprisingly good unsigned band, through the incredible crush in Eluveitie, and Dimmu's great pits, to the brutal maelstroms of Napalm Death (their excuse is that they were 14 when they came up with the name ). Circle pits, walls of death (albeit quite small ones, not Soulfly's on Friday), crowd surfing (better to Eluveitie than to Dimmu Borgir), as well as the feeling of a few thousand people headbanging in time, and the sight of every arm and every hand raised in horns. Strobe lighting on the drums, as though they were moving from one crash to the next instantly. Looking someone in the face, both of you metal salutes, as you run into each other. All in all, pretty indescribable.

Sunday has been a lot more refined. After being given a lift home at half 11 by Patrick (thanks are definitely due, though I at least paid for the petrol, courtesy of someone who trampled £10 into the mud ) I was predictably dehydrated and tired, but recovered reading Signal to Noise, which is very weird and very good. After setting off late, we went and saw Derby Shakespeare Company's (whose centenary it apparently is, so congratulations!) performance of Henry V, which ~harricotfille was in, and which was set, very pleasantly, outdoors, with Matt, Pat and I sitting on the grass, which I think is just the way to enjoy most performances.

It was just the sort of performance which ticks the village green Shakespeare stereotype, and the words 'nice', ' pleasant' and 'English' are definitely the most applicable, although I must admit to being annoyed by the midi trumpet (midi trumpets never sound anything like real ones ). Considering the very good strings, and esp... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19880733/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19880733/ Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:46:46 PDT We did, however, scramble up the entire length of Sticklebrook, the 6 of us tied together along the rope, and some points we belayed each other up, picking and pulling our way across the rocks or wading knee deep through the plunge pools. Despite the river being in tumult, I only nearly got washed away once, at the top of a particularly strong waterfall, and we waded out into Stickle Tarn victorious.

Only I felt like a swim, and even then I didn't go any further than 2/3 m out for fear of cramp and I had to come back in quickly when my lungs seized and I nearly panicked, but it truly was a hell of a kick, earning me the appraisal 'you mad bastard' from another group of walkers. Likewise, abseiling down a waterfall was cold, but truly the best way I've found to experience it.

Friday was also very good, walking outside of Buxton (thanks once again to ~harricotfille for the idea), eating very nice chocolate fudge cake (argh, undeserved guilt), and generally having a very nice day. Evening, we went to see Wall E at last, and it definitely lives up to Pixar's best-even just little bits like the binary keyboard, or the spork classification. It's very good the way the first half hour or so works perfectly without any speech, and the quality of the animation seems flawless.

Tuesday had both good climbing, and gymnastics by the end; although obviously I can't do anything interesting it's still fun to watch and mess up trying. I led the longest, but certainly not the hardest, climb at Alter Rock, and belayed Matthew for the largest lead fall I've ever seen (a large part my fault for not pulling slack in fast enough ).

In other news, I've finally got around to watching Fight Club, and I must say it utterly beat my expectations, and I'd recommend it to anyone who feels at all like an anarchist. In a similar vein, Trainspotting lives up to its' praise, alternately incredibly philosophical, witty and sheer nihilistic; one of its' best traits is for the main characters all to be complete bastards (or rather c****, in their terminology ).

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19754276/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19754276/ Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:42:42 PDT

Monday, I set off cycling, and contrary to my expectations didn't boil in my own juices, but I only got to Hulland Ward before I had a rest and ended up falling asleep. Tuesday, I relearnt how rubbish I am at tennis Then climbing at Harborough-lots of bouldering which I can actually do.

Friday, took ~bloodredmonsterman climbing-I like Arboretum park (mainly because it's free ). It was very good fun, and it was definitely worth showing off hanging on miscellaneous metal bars and going on the little children's odd cycle thing (the looks on their faces were an ego boost, I have to admit ). I was also reminded quite how scary Forbidden Planet is, although those posters which aren't utterly misogynistic or simple merchandise are, I'll allow, good.

By Friday night, parents and Pat left for Dorset, so Matt and I were left the house to ourselves, and, despite not being at all organised, we ended up an impromptu house party, of a sort, when Sam and Hamish turned up on the doorstep, bringing someone I've never met before, who I've only this evening learnt is called Rob, to listen to very loud music on large speakers. Some very disturbing, to me, conversations resulted.

Saturday and Sunday have been Survival camp with explorers, which wasn't quite as hardcore as I expected, but was still excellent in different ways. Saturday was essentially an incident hike, being cool, strapping as much kit onto the small bags we'd packed all our stuff into as possible, and then crossing a river (which I did the truly hardcore way , hanging under a bridge, etc. The evening, night, and Sunday morning was survival-failing to light a fire without matches, sleeping in hammocks, building a shelter (ours was architecturally amazing, but survival wise somewhat out of place ) and so on-as well as not so survival listening to random music and playing truth or dare (always the dare ).

The food was very 'interesting', with strawberry gunk (which really wasn't very nice), and blackberry gunk (which was), sucked out of a hole cut in a plastic bag, shared between three people (a surreal experience ), as well as stewed carrots and potatoes, and grass, and bits of wood, either skewered or scooped by hand out of murky brown water, the Wayfarer Orange meals (which tasted of beans, bacon, and lots of food colouring), and thick, gooey oatmeal, eaten out of mugs as though they were (warm) glaciers. Ash absolutely everywhere. Oh, and lots and lots of raisins and chocolate biscuits, and a very nice Not-a-sandwich.

Apart from that, the week has seen an awful lot of Halo (competitive campaign is good fun), hanging about, and listening to Psychosocial (gimmicky masks and gratuitous language is forgiven, so long as they keep on writing stuff like this ).

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19654186/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19654186/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:55:41 PDT

After getting five hours sleep Sunday morning, we headed off to Kinder training. Although I was rather unprepared, bringing no food but sugar water (so thanks to Pat and Sam for sharing ), we kept up a decent pace all the way around, hence best time yet, 3:52 for about 18 miles.


Tuesday evening we went climbing at Black Rocks, the same two routes we always do, so I spent most of the time bouldering, and getting nowhere-gritstone is annoying that way, you tend to either do it straight off, or spend absolutely ages and never manage to get more than a metre off the ground. Saturday we went to the Roaches, for some very interesting climbing-proper gritstone climbs, with hand jams (sticking your fist into a crack and tensing ) and at some points full arm jams. Unfortunately, the cracks were out of the sunlight, so were filled with all sorts of mosses and slimes, which don't make the best holds. We also rigged up a double abseil, and once again a lot of get nowhere bouldering, though it was fun anyway.

What made Saturday truly interesting was that we then went swimming, but seeing as there aren't many crystal clear lakes in the Roaches, we found a peat bog pool instead. The water itself was only about 20cm deep, but the mud at the bottom went down at least half a metre, and was a wonderful black, so the water soon turned dark, dark brown-to the extent that the moment you put your hand underwater, you couldn't see it anymore. With hindsight, being the only person swimming with my head underwater probably wasn't such a good idea.

Anyway, apart from those the past week has been a lesson in dullness, so I obviously need to be rather more organised, get up and do something.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19501209/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19501209/ Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:03:46 PDT ) , and back again. There's so much to write about!-I'll just write some quick summaries, in more or less chronological order, so hopefully I can remember it all, and if anyone is interested enough, just ask about something and I'll elaborate gladly.

Electronic speed checkers with smiley faces
Bookshops as libraries (reminds me of xkcd, as most things do)
A minibus interior decorated as a yacht (teak abounds)
A Turkish flag on every headland (make sure the Greek's don't steal it ), lit up green next to the real crescent moon
A guy fishing with a spear gun, and a picture of him to prove it
Turquoise blue seas, matching the sky
Ancient withered trees, and not quite Hippocrates' plane tree
Ruins, young and old, intact and heaped
'Captain Kniedos', with his hat and moustache
Kniedos, a town of over 20,000 in it's heyday, now just heaps of white marble-very relaxed excavation methods
Light scattered off a thousand wavelets
Broaching twice but reefing is a last resort
Climbing on untouched cliffs, easier up than down, but backing out of trying the unprotected top 10m (I'm not entirely crazy)
Somersaults off the jetty, the boat, the kayak, and tombstoning off the smallest of cliffs
Mezzés!-lots and lots of very very good food, and very nice hummus
Oguns entertainment: Turkey's long and boring winter nights, eh?
Only I escaped the domino chain, even if I wouldn't embarrass myself, and thus lost at 'otato football'
Electrocuting myself while having a shower-I wondered what that button was for...
A harsh and spiky land, torn shins time and again; it was worth it for the run down though
Winning the salt and pepperpot challenge (but hanging upside down from the eaves was not allowed)
The best view from a toilet seat I've ever known ()
A grasshopper 20cm long, and 'flying olives'
A man rowing around a bay, selling fresh apricots, followed by his 'apprentice', in a much smaller boat
Undoing the shoreline, but no time to get back in the boat, so dragged along behind as the rope is reeled in
The constant sound of cicadas, though they can't be caught on film
Fresh and salt water mixed in cool and warm patches
Butterfly stroke is exhausting, but rewarding
We know why people use outboards-rowing is far too sweaty (but fun)
The Alveda man, and his box of icecreams-the gullet beckoning him imperiously
Sandals, otherwise great, where the glue melts and the straps come loose-ach, tie the soles to my feet with bits of grass instead
'Mozzarella 3'-the most beautiful boat I've seen, but, inevitably, probably owned by people far richer than they deserve
Some of the best bread I have ever tasted, made in home kilns
Sea caterpillars, and so many colours of fish, but only Natashquan saw dolphins (and lucked out to the extreme)
Soft, soft mud, like the swamp monster pulling us under, and green water too thick to see beyond your hands (underwater hide and seek!)
Trying to decipher the greek alphabet, with 'n's and 'H's as 'ee's and 'B's as 'v's
A chocolate box tourist town, behind which lie the ruins of abandoned mansions
30,000 people reduced to 1,500 and a 10,000 pound bomb made into a bell, high above all those who choose to remain
Mosaics of pebbles and God's door always locked; a dozen churches much the same
Lots of chocolate icecream!
A wreck on cliffs, and finding out we anchored on top of another (oops )
An empty submarine base, only the church still intact
Patrick lifted on the spinnaker halliard, hoisted up the mast (of his own free will, honest!)
An abandoned toga party-a shame, I guess, I was vaguely looking forward to being Pan, and had just about managed to put my hair into horns
A volcano!-dormant, but steaming... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19202966/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19202966/ Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:11:43 PDT Aliwoo has a much more succinct account of events, but I'll go on the massive speech here, as is my wont.

At the Opera House itself we went through lots and lots of different strange experiences, accompanied by Nathan, our quite nice, but somewhat incompetent at anything that wasn't on the schedule, guide. Credit to him, he saw the way the wind was blowing and Mr Coffey seemed to do most of the bossing.

A point of interest was yesterday's warm up with Gareth, from the Royal Ballet, who is by a massive margin the most incredibly camp person I have ever met (singing along to the 'Dream Girls' music used for the warm up, "wayoo"s and all, was the least of it), and who has done nothing to ease my prejudices of male ballet dancers (ballerinos? ). The funniest bit was being told we were all there because we all enjoy dance so much. Sometimes I just love being a musician.

We were definitely the strangest of the 9 schools there, which I expected from the start, and it was also something of an eye opener to see the difference in our 'focus'-no one taught by Mr Coffey ever adjusts their hair in the middle of a rehearsal, never mind a performance (which meant I had to look like a pineapple and use hairgrips , although at least I didn't use hairspray). There were some very, very good ideas, and some very good performances there (I think even ~harricotfille would struggle to manage some of the things one of the dancers did, although, to be honest, I think that's almost certainly a very good thing ) but, being biased, I'd say ours was either the best or the second best. Another thing I'm glad to say is that our costumes, simple blacks, were much, much better than what one of the schools had to wear, and our one song was vastly better than that same school's.

London itself was incredible, wandering around, getting 'moved on' from place after place until Mr Coffey starting boiling over and we stayed in Leicester Square, all singing Something Inside So Strong as the guy gave up kicking us out. We didn't exactly start the Internationale, but it felt good. I then got into yet another debate with an evangelist, this time a German, and, in my opinion, far more sensible than the last guy-we agreed on most things (although definitely not his way of drawing people in ), but in the end we had to agree to disagree that Christianity was/was not the only way to improving oneself and/or 'salvation'.

At the uni accomadation we were staying we failed to have a pizza party, due to non functional cookers, so played pizza Frisbee instead, ate lots of chocolate, and talked late into the early morning, as well as going on a little 2:00 AM walk along the canal, and relaxed listening to Daniela, Alice, Jenny and Matt play guitar and sing very well, which made me feel rather jealous but otherwise incredibly good.

In the interests of not writing too much, I'll try to draw to a close around here. The trip really was incredible, in so many ways, although I'm still annoyed at £2.00 99p flakes. I'm off tomorrow to Turkey and Greece for two weeks, so in the intermittent period:
Enjoy Sun Run-I hope you get sub two hours.
Good luck with the Academies Trust-may the musical be as weird as the best of Coffey's works.

So now, I'll leave you with a song: "It's the final Kelp Dance..." ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19111441/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19111441/ Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:44:45 PDT Oh, and if someone, not mentioning any names, says "If you've managed to plough through all of this then thanks very much for taking an interest-you must be VERY bored though" for any less than a page's worth, something is wrong indeed.

The past week or so seems to be a case of some things going better than expected, or at least the last few days seem like that. Today, for instance, was the street party, which has been planned for months back by various people with lots of wine. I expected it to be rather lame-lots of people who live next to each other but don't know each other either being very awkward and sitting in little clumps noone knowing how to break the ice (we're British, after all ) or finding out that they don't really like each other and would really rather not know each other after all (we're pretty much middle class after all ).

In the end, though, it was very nice, once the rain stopped, with far too much food, too much to do, and a good helping of levity (alcohol helped in many people's cases, irony for others ). Matthew and I absolutely thrashed everyone else in the three legged races (not only running almost full speed, but forward and backward rolls, as handicaps ), but our, even, side of the street only just lost out at tug of war. Meanwhile I managed to avoid getting my photo taken in one of the typical 'fat woman on beach' cut out things (specially made, and very well painted, I'll give it that), played volleyball very badly, facepainted the triforce on my hand (I've played far too much Zelda, and willingly admit being a geek in that respect ), and generally took the opportunity to show off and enjoy the present moment.

Friday night was another party, which I also had low expectations of-a sleepover at a friend's to celebrate end of exams. I'll just say that this group of friends is the least extreme of the people I know, and leave it at that, but that's not to detract from their company, and to the very best of my knowledge none of them role play . We played too many computer games (Spiderman is fun on the Wii), and much much too much Forge on Halo 3 (making big explosions should not keep us occupied for hours, but it does)-I lost out to Sam and Lawrence (who didn't sleep at all), going to sleep at 05:30, and waking up two hours later.

I regretted this midday Saturday, sailing, although I spent the first two hours doing a Rip van Winkle by a stream (if you don't get the reference, google it, before you get the wrong idea ), and feeling absolutely depressed and shattered later, but shook this off by being pelted with cold water in a Laser Radial (to be honest, I was overpowered, but I didn't get too wet, doing 7 perfect dry capsizes instead ). Although I really didn't want to go sailing at the time, I have to thank my brothers for pulling me out, as I enjoyed it in the end.

Wednesday, we had a long day, going down to Milton Keynes by train, to the Open University, for a meeting of the people with whom I am designing part of a satellite. After looking around the OU's really, really cool equipment (Custom made, self blown glass works! Mass spectrometers ranging from the room sized, to fitting in a suitcase! Machines which have been so altered and cobbled on only one person knows what each bit does any more! ), and handling 6.5 billion year old bits of rock (including a £20,000 5 m... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19053882/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19053882/ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:24:40 PDT
Comment, and I will try to tell you....

a) how I know you
b) what I associate you with
c) something I like about you
d) a memory I have of you
e) something about your gallery
f) my favorite pic of yours

...and I may ask something I've always wanted to know about you, but I can't be certain of thinking of something for that category.

Hmm, the mood thingy seems to crash DA, so I'm afraid I'm going to be forced into having a big grin for a while or not yet, whether or not I feel like it.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19003336/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/19003336/ Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:19:45 PDT
So, I'm pretty worn out, due to a rather hectic weekend, with Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday, explorer's summer solstice, mine and Matt's birthday, and Sam's birthday, respectively. Friday was Pizza, Pop, Planning...and Raving, and so I ate a lot of the former, drank a lot of the second, calculated overcomplicated plans for a massive pioneering project (just you wait...), but didn't do much raving, as I'm not a raving sort of person (unless the word 'mad' is added, apparently ). Nonetheless, I failed badly at kick rounders and limbo, and managed to climb the scout hut's flagpole, which I've wanted to try for years. Time went to bed: Approaching 00:00

Saturday went not quite as planned, as the weather was frankly crap, so we didn't get a party in the park, meaning that I spent about an hour running around Darley Park finding people to show them back to our house, which I'm ambivalent about, as I enjoyed running in the rain in sandals and shorts, but missing out on talking to people wasn't fun. Nonetheless, I thought it was great as we made lots of food, including stuffed peppers and 'ludicrously hot' chilli (I really don't think it was that hot, but maybe my taste buds are destroyed to the same extent as my sense of smell), as well as listening to some very nice piano and guitar (thanks to Nick Thea, Jenny, Daniela and Callum ) and some very loud metal (my neck still aches from headbanging ).

We also watched Spirited Away, which is always a nice film (unless you don't like animé, ~phantomward ), and as time went on played an awful lot of Halo and Guitar Hero (I'm so, so much better at the former ), which I have to apologise to ~harricotfille for-you should never have to read a book at a party Ach well, I think it was very, very good, and though I don't rank things, it was one of the best parties I can think of, and definitely one of the best birthday parties I've had. Time went to bed: After 04:00

Sunday was very different, with us heading up to Harborough as soon as all of the people who had come to Saturday's party left in the morning, with the VW Polo becoming the Rage car (listening to the speakers struggling to play Sepultura was interesting ). The weather was much better, although incredibly windy, which was nervewracking at times, at the top of the rocks setting up a climb. The food was absolutely amazing (serious Kudos to Sam's mum ), although I didn't eat as much as I'd like to, spending most of the time climbing or setting climbs. It seems to have worn us all out (even those of us who had more than 3/4 hours sleep the night before, not mentioning any names... ) so we didn't have a massive party back at Sam's house, but it was still very good. Time went to bed: Around 00:00

So, now I can relax with typical study leave, excepting the Royal Opera House project, which is at turns either fun or frustrating, or both. Tonight I also went to Carnegie group, for some very, very strange conversations (and just leave it at that), and also a reminder of how good a book What I Was is.

_{Oh, and I'm pretty sure I'm still sane, although I didn't feel it Sunday.}

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18895803/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18895803/ Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:27:44 PDT

1.First thing you wash in the shower?
The tiles; it cools the water down wonderfully.

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?
Blue, with darker blue where it's slowly falling to pieces

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?
Umm..no comment?-I can't actually remember last kissing anyone, so I'll say 'no', to be on the safe side.

4. Do you plan outfits?
Twice a year: Children in Need day and my Grandad's formal birthday lunch

7. Who was the last person you kissed?
I honestly do not know, so I'd guess it was before I was 7 and my memory improved

10. What are you craving right now?
I don't crave much, but maybe raw onion.

13. Ever hooked up with some one out of state?
Never 'hooked up' with anyone, and I don't live in the US so I can't meet anyone 'out of state' so ha to you.

14. Do you sleep with any stuffed animals?
Two (Macintosh the bear and Flipper the seal), but that's only out of long held tradition and apathy otherwise.

15. Would you dance to the taco song ?
Taco song?-based on the fact that I almost never dance I'd say probably no.

16. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
Yep, so long as you're talking binary . I think that counting in xⁿ is slightly more interesting.

17. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?
Depends which type of ice cream. Most of what I eat, home made, it's a matter of chipping bits off with a chisel.

18. Do you like anyone right now?
Would just saying 'yes' be enough?

21. Do you like cottage cheese?
I don't think I've ever tried it. Give me Red Leicester any day, or Hartington Stilton if I'm in the mood for it.

25. Would you go sky diving?
Yes, yes, yes! Is this an offer?

26. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush?
Only if I'm allowed to carry a gun or hydrogen cyanide. More seriously, I don't think assassinating him would help anything, but sometimes it's very hard not to want to.

28. Is there anything sparkly on you?
My watch is probably the sparkliest thing I own, and it isn't sparkly.

30. Do you rent movies often?
Not really, there's no need when you have the internet!

31. Who sits behind you in your math/art class?
n/a Study leave!

38. Ever been on a train?
What sort of a question is this?-the UKs train network is among the best in the world, trains are low carbon, and they offer more personal freedom. On the other hand, my journal shows the disadvantages...

39. Ever told someone you loved them?
Due to my aversion to the word 'love' I don't think I've ever used those words, but in spirit, yes.

47. What was the last question you asked?
"What sort of a question is this?"

48. What was the last CD you bought?
Why buy CDs when you have the Internet?

52. Last time you cried?
Actual crying, I don't remember. Years ago by now. Nearly crying, this afternoon, with the Vow of Remembrance running through my head.

53. Ever walked into a wall?
Wall, lamppost, pillar, fence-all when reading or in a particularly intense argument. I've also done the classic one with French Windows.

54. Ever walked UP a wall?
Oh yes, many a time-climbing does that, and then there's me failing to imitate the Mat... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18856963/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18856963/ Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:50:05 PDT
Anyway, as you can guess from the title we went to Yorkshire this weekend, as my dad was crewing in the sailing regatta there. More specifically we went to Fylie, which is just north of Flamborough Head on some of the most quickly eroding coastline in Britain (one of the only things I learnt from three years worth of KS3 geography there... ) and, looking at the rocks, you can certainly tell why. It is a land where the cliffs are not made of stone, but mud. It's also quite a nice example of the kind of peeling paint seaside resort that was really popular earlier in the century but seems to be fading a bit now, though is still rather pretty, and retains the small businesses and atmosphere of the 60s still.

The first day was, quite simply, crap. First we'd missed explorers then, in the only short respites we got from the rain, there wasn't enough wind to do anything, and we ended up sitting on the rapidly diminishing beach, in a cave, and in an abandoned football field, getting slowly more wet. About the only thing we managed to do was landboard down the slipway. Yay . On the other hand, we did eat some very nice curry in the evening, although it wasn't particularly hot.

Sunday more than made up for it though, as we ran along the Brigg, a spur of the only rock to be found in Fylie stretching out what seems like miles from the rest of the shore, which we ran along as the tide came in and the North Sea monster waves swept across it. Fortunately, we managed to time it so that we went in the gap between waves, in the backwash, leaving only our feet, and Matthew, to get absolutely soaked (my thanks go to Zelda for the great practise at getting the timing right ).

We also went kiteboarding along the massive beach, and have now, finally, learnt how to control it properly, so can now jibe, go upwind, etc (and so, Alice, we are even less likely to break limbs now ). It was damn good fun, and at least vaguely extreme at times. In the afternoon each of us went out in our bright yellow, little sailing dinghy, among the 3m rollers. At times the rise and fall felt like a Perfect Storm reenactment.

All in all, it was very good, although there were times on Saturday I wished we'd never came (the kind of utterly stereotypical failed English holiday, only missing the brightly coloured anoraks-it makes me understand what my dad went through all those years ago, wit' 'is Yorkshire childhood).

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18783016/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18783016/ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:33:49 PDT ), got caught in a 'debate' with a visiting Dutch evangelist, who literally said "Abortion is murder", that evidence for the flood comes in the way a beetle is fossilised scurrying up a tree, that all of our dating methods (carbon 14 being the best known one) are wrong and that the universe is ~6000 years old (fossils, incidentally, are apparently proof of this, despite my seemingly needed explanation that fossils aren't actually the bones ), and generally ignored all of what humans have for the past millenia been trying to build up in the form of science, and rational thought. I thought of crashing their prayer meeting but missed it in the end. Anyway, that's a rant for another time. After waiting, I found out that you can only open an ISA once you have an NI number, which arrived in the post today, so I'll have to wander in some time in the next few days.

Exams have continued their often annoying selves, but the Additional Maths paper at least was interesting, and I now only have one paper remaining (statistics ). The Royal Opera House project has continued to be interesting, although Mr Coffey continues to be perfectionist.

I've also taken the opportunities of study leave to go climbing, landboarding and kiteboarding, and think I've definitely become better at the latter-I can now go upwind! Unfortunately, it means I've been rather bashed up and various joints are starting to twinge.

Finally, explorers was good, at Clifton woods. The zipline wasn't as long as last time, nor so steep, but we built it quite well, and it was generally quite fun. Building it took us away from the kind of silly wide games, so I don't know whether we lost out of not. It wasn't a particularly extreme night, but it was fun nonetheless, improvised slack roping especially.

In other news, today at 18:00 the Commons voted, with a majority of 9 and 21 to extend the limit of detention without charge to 42 days. It is now possible to be arrested and held for 6 weeks without any evidence being presented against you. There are indeed many safeguards, making the extension mainly symbolic, but it is a sad symbol indeed. Also rather depressing is the way the chamber emptied so quickly afterwards-the dedication of our MPs is astounding.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18645184/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18645184/ Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:10:23 PDT

Yay!-I am 16 and a few hours old now. I've obviously got to leave home, get married, enter full time employment, buy lots of knives, and all the other things which I can now legally do (now another two years before I can give myself quick and easy lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver).

Anyway, I am very happy, listening to music through big, and very shiny new speakers, having eaten very nice (albeit odd, due to being gluten free) birthday cake, although I forgot to make a wish, and one of the candles relighted itself so I wouldn't have got it anyway. I've also got a midi connector and a fancy program for it, so will have to do lots of testing on converting keyboard, sheet music, trumpet, and any other noises I feel like checking. Finally, all the money which we've been given thanks to our lack of imagination has been requisitioned by parents, and used to buy a new landboard, so we now have two!-one which Jono claims is a death trap (only because it's twitchy), the other which is fancy enough to even have suspension.

Quick run through of exams: I've recycled what feels like a tree's worth of paper from all the practise papers, worksheets, and associated junk in Maths and Systems and Control-I will never be doing the latter one again. Meanwhile I'm on the second wave, and have written about 9 pages worth today in 3:45 hours, in English and History-my right hand felt like it had either been in a crusher or had arthritis by the end of it, but I should have managed it all. At least I enjoyed the opportunity for arguing that the youth of today are unfairly blamed and that it the old cause greater harm, albeit indirectly, to society (rants rule okay ). Writing massive analyses of the Treaty of Versailles and the New Deal wasn't bad either.

Outside that, there is lots of work to do for the Royal Opera House, which is a mix of being enjoyably odd and fulfilling note by note the music teacher's mad plan. It seems that I won't have to be a baby dinosaur in front of several thousand people after all, although doubtless there is another role in store...

Oh, I'll also quote my new t shirt: "You're just jealous 'cause the little voices are talking to me"-it couldn't be more true.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18512400/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18512400/ Mon, 26 May 2008 14:25:38 PDT ), long walks round South Derbyshire (and being menaced by cows and 'attacked' by a pheasant-I managed to stare the cows down in the end though), and sitting for ages in the easiest GCSE Maths exam I've ever looked at. Apart from that, all the exams were passable, although I only just managed to finish the English Lit in time (least favourite written exam, never to be done again ).

On the Saturday, we went up to Glossop as Nick was crewing in a sailing regatta, and we took the opportunity to go walking on Bleaklow in, no rain. The weather was incredible, with the wind driving at about force 8/9 (Beaufort, that is), coming up 40 mph. As you may guess, they didn't get much sailing done, with the boats that tried breaking. Meanwhile, we ended up tramping a lot further than we intended, about 14 miles all told, and ended up tramping across the heather trusting a compass bearing.

I've also spent a lot of time reading Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', and it's definitely on my list of favourite books. He is (or rather was) more of a socialist than I am, and an American humanist socialist at that, and after he spent months on the road with the migrant farmers, those who lost everything to the dustbowl, to the big banks and land corporations, those who struggled just to live, he wrote this book, his masterpiece. There are sections which moved me to tears. There isn't much more I can say; I'd advise reading it, interested in politics or not.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18380493/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18380493/ Sun, 18 May 2008 10:10:51 PDT
Monday-went on a very nice walk, and everything, brown two weeks ago, is now green, where it isn't white or yellow with flowers. Ended up joining in a game of basketball with complete strangers, to make up even numbers boys/girls. Apparently I'll now be blown kisses each morning as I go to school (). This also started the week of Bouncers performances, which went very well. Now all the people who didn't already look at me askew know me as extremely weird, thanks to the wonders of Godber. Thankfully, it is the extremely funny kind of weird, and we had to keep on pausing while the audience's laughter subsided.

Wednesday-Musical performer and Dramatic monologue of the year. Everyone has to be congratulated for actually doing it (even if I found some annoying), and some deserve a awful lot of praise (Sacha Baron Cohen does Genesis and devilish good drumming ). We two proper Shakespeare 'dramaar' performances (~phantomward for one), lots of enthusiastic jumping about and intense glaring and shouting. Battle of the Bands was very good, with a very good Iced Earth cover (in my opinion, it still doesn't make up for the choice of song , again ~phantomward) and a cello and guitar duo 'more Radiohead than Radiohead' Creep (hooray for ~bloodredmonsterman and ~eternal1-2). Meanwhile, in the band I played exactly 3 pieces in three and a half hours.

Friday-the last day of compulsory education. Lots and lots of writing in leaver's books (each accompanied by a small and grayscale sketch ), signing shirts (I was told to write as complex equations as I could think of ), free chocolate, and general high spirits. I wasn't as enthusiastic as most people, with probably another decade or so of education confronting me, but it's still a good feeling.

Explorers deserves an entire paragraph of its own. In short, we built rafts. At one point all 11 of us had to get on one raft and then the other, but the rafts weren't all that buoyant. On the barrels everyone's shins were underwater, but the kayaks looked promising...until the holes at the top went below the waterline. With very satisfying glugs the kayaks ended up on the bottom of the Derwent and we ended up very wet and very cold (with hindsight, my diving in to the green water was not a great idea-it was fun though ).

Saturday-both the street jumble sale and the 3000 regatta. Going to the latter, I crewed for someone from Queen Mary reservoir (he'd banned his normal crew from coming in order that he could do revision ), which is way down south, and I obviously sabotaged him as we ended up getting about 5th. Apparently the jumble sale went surprisingly well, our house having volunteered to host it, though you wouldn't guess from the heaps of stuff now in the garage, or which I carried about the place today.

Well, with ~6 weeks of exams ahead, and over 15 weeks of holiday (sorry, 'intense revision' ), I'm definitely cheerful. [Insert word], this is a long journal. I'm tempted not to apologise for this for once to see the reaction, but my guilt won't allow it. _sorry

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18275728/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18275728/ Sun, 11 May 2008 15:10:31 PDT We've also been doing quite a bit of climbing, visiting the new Alter Rock wall on Monday, Black Rocks on Friday, with explorers, and Harborough today. All very good, with three utterly different styles of climbing.

As exams draw close, school has been a matter of constant 'revision'-ie sitting with past exam papers in front and utterly ignoring them while reading Hellboy and drawing. Incidentally, I'm somewhat confused as apparently my Frankenstein essay for English was the best my teacher has ever read, which is especially surprising as I actually enjoyed writing it for a change (two pages of context and lots of twiddly bits where I write as though I actually know what the hell I'm babbling about). Additionally, we've been working hard on Bouncers by John Godber, in order to be ready for the coming week's gatherings (aka assemblies). This 'working hard' seems to involve intermittently hanging upside down beneath a wheely table as it is pushed around the room, or going into a Cleesian rant on peas as compared to chips, but I'm certainly not complaining.

Wow, the week in two paragraphs-it must have been boring. Odd, it hasn't particularly felt it at the time.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18162907/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18162907/ Sun, 04 May 2008 10:46:40 PDT

After trying to get to sleep in the train station we were kicked out (), and spent the next two hours trawling over Newport trying to find somewhere to get to sleep. Trying the crown courts (locked), 'breaking into' the train station (a watchman kicked us out again), a park (no lights), we finally decided upon a bus shelter, to sleep in shifts. Ready to settle down, for some freak reason Matthew had the luck to turn his phone on. We were regaled with a messages that our parents had arrived in Newport and were going to pick us up, so thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou to them (even though they won't read this and we've already thanked them again and again). We got back in Derby at half four in the morning and crashed, as relieved as I think I've ever been.

Anyway, the background to this is very long. We were going to Cornwall to watch the finals of the Young Horticulturalist of the Year, which Sam got through to. Taking trains down, in which oddly enough my ticket was never checked (thankfully, despite the 8 changes or so we made ), we were delayed, but this was all okay, and actually preferable, because if the third train we took hadn't been delayed we'd have missed it because of the first delay, leaving us stuck in Plymouth for the night. Instead, we managed to pull into St Austell's and checked in at a Travel lodge somewhere around 2 in the morning. After a passable sleep, and a massive breakfast (£7.50 all you can eat, and <16s are free! ) we headed on to the Eden Project on the 8 AM staff bus.

The Eden Project was absolutely amazing. Sam, the youngest at the competition by several years, is apparently the 7th best horticulturalist under 30 in the country (ie in the top 0.5%), although, despite the sign we made for him ("Go Sam Go!" ), the other competitors were just too fast. We had some incredibly good pizza, looked at the pretty Fibonacci spiral roof, were amazed by the tropical biome in particular, with 40m trees, and generally enjoyed ourselves. To round up the day we ran the 3km from the train station to the beach and back in enough time to catch the train, as well as skim stones, climb the cliffs, and for Patrick to collect Cornish sand (a present for a mystery person, apparently ). Overall, it was a damn good 36 hours away from Derby, and feels an awful lot funnier now than it did at 2 in the morning.

Finally, I can't close without mentioning Thursday night, when we went to the university pool in Mickleover, armed with a tent, and tried to pitch it underwater. It was a monstrosity to do when it billowed about the place and we had to do everything holding our breath, but we managed it, after several times when I stayed under until things started to go black. Sometimes, after a point, it felt like I just didn't need to breath, and that was amazing, and allowed me to swim a full length (30m?) underwater. Other times, I could barely go under before I needed to come up again. Friday, my head ached and it felt as though my diaphragm was ripped to shreds, but I think it was worth it.

Anyway, I can't r... ]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18072504/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/18072504/ Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:57:08 PDT ), wave our flags, and march very, very slowly in order that the beavers don't get trodden underfoot.

Being the flag escort, as per usual, I got to sit in the nice choir seats in the cathedral, where no one cares that we're laughing through the entire service. Standing next to the Lord Lieutenant (with who you expect to see plums fall out of his mouth with every word), I got to renew my promise to 'do my duty to a non existent deity and the new republic', and felt very proud at once more asserting my individuality. Of course, such a gesture is as pointless as it gets while standing in the same uniform as a hundred or so others doing the same salute. As regards St George's Day itself, I'll trot out my preprepared wit, and wonder at why we should celebrate the death of that particular Palestinian (and yes, I know he was born Anatolian), rather than the 150 or more that the Israeli army have blown up or shot in the past months, not to count (because the Israeli government never seems to) the ones dying because the Israeli blockade is preventing humanitarian aid.

Friday and Saturday were good, doing lots of sleepover stuff, including watching Will Smith be legend (I think they've tried and failed to mix a classic zombie horror and a more thought provoking psychological side), building a thoroughly evil looking ballista (I'll see if I can upload pictures), which nonetheless wasn't reliable enough. Then we did the ultimate tidy up, finding all manner of relics in the scout hut sheds-including a scythe, sickles, lots of war period tin boxes, and the metal stake things which were used over 40 years ago to lower the prefab scout hut into place from cranes. The paint testing was worrying, with a new meaning to the colour 'antique white'.

Almost finally, I'd have a cynical mood, but I can't find one, so I think I can just about merit the pirate, having worn a bandana in school until I was told it was 'hardly appropriate'. Finally, we need to think up a name for the network group which is going to be better than the often incompetent Quest-unfortunately Deus is probably out, but Caelestus/Caelestii are possible. Any ideas?

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17939901/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17939901/ Sun, 20 Apr 2008 07:58:17 PDT ). In short, I had a lot more fun than I ought to have had, although at times it was incredibly frustrating.

Tech coursework is a tale of misery and failure, but thanks to staying back in school desperately past 1900 and staying up until midnight typing away, I managed to get my product to work (mostly), and go some way to fixing other people's circuits, although despite burning my fingers until they were numb (mistaking a soldering iron for a multimeter ), ignoring all safety precautions, and the other desperate measures, I couldn't get Rob's circuit sorted in time. () Matthew was even more desperate though, bringing the circuit home and tinkering in the garage to fix it. Anyway, it's all done now, and if I've failed completely it's too late. Of course, DiDA men had it even worse...

Finally, I had my German speaking test the day before yesterday (), but it went surprisingly well, and I spoke at an intelligible speed (), and didn't utterly panic and mess up, although at the end of the exam I needed two pints of water. We were frequently reminded that this was the 'most marks per minute', so with half of my German GCSE now down (coursework is 25%), I think I'm doing quite well.

On more enjoyable notes, explorers was good both weeks, with some swelled numbers. Nothing particularly crazy, although we watched as Dave free climbed a 20-30m stone at Alport Heights to set a rope up (), and this Friday we cycled rapidly away from chavs in Markeaton Park, as well as going down (and up) some very nice hills around Kedleston Hall. We've also been climbing both Sundays, at Wirksworth Leisure Centre (where Pat had great fun paying with plastic), and managed some V2s bouldering, while failing miserably at others, and lead climbing around F5s.

Yesterday, we went walking in Milldale with a friend of our dad's and his family, and had a very good pub lunch (Hartington Stilton is very strong, and very nice, or at least is was on the pizza ). Other than that, I've auditioned for dramatic monologue of the year, although there are an awful lot of candidates this year, and it was quite good, although the script I wrote is extremely variable in quality.

Wow, massive journal, so don't feel at all bad if you don't read it-it's mainly for my own memory.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17709291/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17709291/ Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:38:52 PDT harricotfille beat it yesterday), although the sun itself was behind a cloud at first, so I had to wait longer to see it. Coming back, I wrote lots of messages in the snow, although I'll not be saying what they were, especially as they had all melted two hours later. Getting back I read more Thomas Hardy ('Tess of the D'Urbervilles', which is quite good, although not extremely so) and then went to sleep again three hours after I got up, and an hour or two before anyone else would get up. It doubtless doesn't match up to many other people's mornings, but all in all, it was great.

Apart from that, I'll recommend 'Son of Rambow' to you, which I went to watch last night-it is a very very silly film and damn good at that. At some particularly funny points everyone in the cinema was in synchronised hysterics. Oh, and Friday we went to Cheltenham Racecourse for an Oxbridge conference, where we wandered round all day listening to lectures by either an Oxford or a Cambridge head of department, extolling the wonders of either Oxford or Cambridge, and in particular their chosen field. At times it was somewhat daunting, with so many extremely bright people to compete with, but it was good nonetheless, especially the Mathematics lecture, and has got me stuck on choosing courses, although I've another two years yet.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17591815/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17591815/ Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:53:10 PDT s, but that wouldn't be very useful. We had a scout camp in the lake district over the weekend that has been trés extreme. We stayed in a cabin rather than tents, so we are at least sane (although I ended up sleeping on the floor under a bed, so perhaps I'm not), and went gill scrambling up a mountain, running back down the same mountain, mountain biking (hardcore mountain biking, especially as the back brakes didn't work) around Lake Windermere, and kayaking in Windermere. We also played some decent wide games (laying an ambush to silently take people out and give them the shock of their lives, climbing up a crag with no light in order to steal a toy monkey und so weiter), climbed, did crazy challenges, ate lunch floating in mid air, made a leap of faith (with bungees and a form of zip wire ), and were generally extreme. Unfortunately the weather wasn't so good Saturday, so we weren't extremely extreme and couldn't go swimming in the tarn (it was above the snow line ), but nevertheless we wore sunglasses and were generally hardcore.

In other news, a team I was part of (albeit a minor part) is now one of 6 contenders for designing a satellite, which would be sent into orbit to carry out scientific experiments. We're hoping to look at Earthshine-follow the links here. All in all, yay!


]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17491824/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17491824/ Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:17:15 PDT
Patrick's 18th was many things, so I don't think I can find a suitable adjective-there was a bouncy castle! After spending the first few hours trying to be unintrusive, I gave up and ate far too much french bread, not enough pizza, drank about 6 pint glasses of water, and absolutely no alcohol, which meant that I could somersault about (although I didn't manage a backflip off the wall) while others lazed around, and laugh at Sam's failure to manage press ups while drunk (although his failed clap press ups looked painful ). We also watched Dangermouse (early 90s cartoon for 8 year olds ), I debated theism, and listened to lots of Pearl Jam and various types of metal at two in the morning (I still don't see the point of swearing unintelligibly while wearing masks though ). Anyway, I think I've written quite enough on that-I'll just leave it on 'it was good'.

Then we were down in East Anglia with grandparents, and I continued to eat too much (on the basis that my grandmother's cooking is absolutely wonderful), wrestled with their boxer dog (who is far too silly to know when to give up), listened to French folk songs (while Matthew tried to understand the lyrics) and read New Scientist, and a very odd book 'The Helmet of Horror'-beneath the very weird and surreal plot there is an awful lot of deep philosophy, cross references, and latin, most of which I probably missed in complete confusion. It makes some very good points about the various theories of mind (such as how easily we are misled into thinking we have free will, the constraints of our perception, the development of mythology und so weiter). I also ate some Shreddies before I remembered they were Nestlé so please hit me.

Finally, across this long weekend, there have been an awful lot of times where I have been extremely jealous of photographers, and anyone who carries a camera around with them, although to be fair, pictures are probably insufficient for the experience of walking (and running) through the snow in bright sunshine, the wonderful sunset we've just had, the wide sky of East Anglia, and so on, in a list which dazzles me. I did, however, manage to draw what I've been trying and failing to for the past week, although still not very well, although I certainly won't be uploading it, I'm afraid.

Ach, well, sorry for the long journal-there are a lot of things I want to write about, but three large paragraphs seems quite enough. Aufwiedersehen...

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17446009/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17446009/ Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:43:22 PDT

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17348128/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17348128/ Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:55:32 PDT
So, well, if I stop rambling, I guess my point is that if we don't complain about the weather, as we always seem to do, but go out anyway, we might well enjoy ourselves more.

Oh, and before I forget: I am still sane!

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17112724/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17112724/ Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:25:07 PST
I have done some things, adding lots of new webcomics to my bookmarks (I'd probably suggest pbf as a taster ), and failing miserably at guitar hero (thanks to Jono Bentley at ~DiDA-Men for bringing it round), and I collected a few more rubber bands...

Anyway, I'm off this evening to the dark peak, camping and hiking with Team God, so the six of us should have fun tramping across the mud in the rain. It looks like Saturday might be better so fingers crossed.

Apart from that, I hope that you've all spent your time more usefully than I have, and enjoyed your holiday thus far, and hopes are for next week. If you are reading this and not on Landau's weird holidays, I'm afraid it's traditional for me to point and laugh, so , and my apologies for doing so.


Writing from hereon after our expedition, it truly was great. Friday was 'like hell on Earth' to quote, and putting tents up in roughly gale force winds and pouring rain was truly an experience. At first it was amazingly exhilarating (in a t shirt ), but then it was too horrible to contemplate, so we went to the pub to dry off. Fortunately, they had hand dryers (, although the toilets stank) and by chance they had a live band, which was odd, but still good. Saturday was generally better, although still gales, and we tramped and ran over the top of Kinderscout happily (I speak for myself, of course), with the amazing sight of Kinder downfall being entirely blown backwards (the spray hurt ).

Looking back on this entry, I think I've overcompensated on using smileys.

]]> ~KrystovArran http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17021711/ http://KrystovArran.deviantart.com/journal/17021711/ Sat, 23 Feb 2008 08:14:10 PST
5 Random Facts About You:
I collect rubber bands almost obsessively (12 this morning, just on the way to the newsagents and back!)
I hate to see switches turned on when nothing is plugged into them
I still sleep in the bunk bed I've had since I was 5
I've been a member of the RSPB intermittently for about a decade
In town, I always sign petitions or give money for/to Oxfam, Amnesty International, WWF

5 Things You Love (chosen almost arbitrarily from a far longer list):
The noise a large book makes when it hits a table
The Brandenburg Concertos and Saturday Night Waltz
Birdsong in the morning
Landscapes viewed from a hill
Running down a hill

5 Things You Hate (well, 4):
SUVs on the school run
Gossip
Commercialism
Demand side economics
I can't think of a fifth-I don't like hating things

5 Things You Do That Makes Others Happy (2 actually):
Holding doors open (I hope )
Giving a valentine's present to anyone who asked
I don't know any more-you'd have to ask these 'Others'

5 Things That People Do That Tick You Off (or rather 2):
I've already listed these under 'things you hate'...
Ah, a few more:
presenting an argument without giving evidence
believing something without checking it up with other sources

5 Things You Want To Do Before You Die (actually, only 4):
See Antarctica
Start a commune
Talk to hundreds more people-learn about their lives
Pass my memories on to others
Apart from these, I don't know.

5 Things You Are Afraid Of:
A world where knowledge is the preserve of only a few
A world where people are divided, seeing others as inhuman
A world where people no longer question authority
A world where the oil has run out, and we have no alternatives
Betraying someone who cares for me (I'll not explain this one )

5 Cool Things That You Own (well, 6-there are too many to choose from!):
Boreal Joker climbing boots and Karrimor fell running trainers
A climbing frame
Half a trumpet and a keyboard
Quarter of a landboard and power kite
My brain (apparently, at least ten other people want it)
My life, in all its wonder

5 People You Admire on DA:
~Aliwoo
*Unknown-person
~DiDA-Men (it's cheating really, as it includes several people who I admire)
*theumbrella
~SlightlyMetaphysical

10 Other stuff:

I take great pleasure out of knowledge, and read my way through various physics journals and books, wikipedia, and various other things

I also try to explain most of these things to everyone I happen to meet, whether they are interested or not

I try to read 'The Daily Mail', 'The Times', 'The Guardian', 'The Telegraph', 'The Independent' and BBC news every school day

I'm a democratic anarcho communist and proud of it, and therefore annoy everyone by explaining it

I just don't understand romance, and thus have never been romantically linked with a single person-sometimes I'm pleased about it, other times I hate myself for it

I long ago decided that it is worthless holding grudges against anyone but yourself, so tend to get along at least passably with everyone except myself

I used to worry that I had disassociative personality disorder but when I checked the symptoms I realised I didn't come close

I feel at least vaguely guilty almost all the time, either because I'm undeservedly lucky, or for thinking that I'm unlucky, when I'm so blatantly not

I enjoy having 'different personalities' if I concentrate, so make myself hyper, melancholy etc, or shut all my emotions down (which can seem necessary )

I like doing things which no one else will (except I've been told I can't hand upside down off doors at school anymore), and go on walks in the middle of the night for hours

I'm not going to tag anyone else, because I don't wan... ]]> ~KrystovArran