Hello again!
Well, there was certainly a perceptible rise in excitement levels last week. Thanks to everyone who left their congratulations on my last post: yes, I did end up collecting my remaining AQA results. Just for the anally-retentive – and me, since I have come to searching my own blog when I can’t remember something – they were:
LTA4 – Texts in Time – 90/90
LTA5C – Literary Connections (Cwk) – 90/90
LTA6 – Reading for Meaning – 117/120
MPC4 – Pure Core Mathematics 4 – 76/100
MS1A – Statistics 1A – 89/100
leaving me with AAAB in total. Which, incidentally, are the same grades achieved by Hiten and Promise (congrats 
) making us a pleasingly unified trio! And after congratulating everyone else who got what they needed – like Robert – and also the Midlandic (yes, that’s now a word) AS lot, I’ll shush about results now. I’m now just looking forward to the years ahead!
In fact, I’ve just returned from a wonderful weekend in Brighton with Lucy. As theme park connoisseurs Brighton Pier wasn’t offering the most extreme white-knuckle rides you could imagine (unless you count bars which don’t appear to lock until the very last minute as ‘white-knuckle’) until we found one ride – probably meant for kids – boasting cheesy dance choons as a soundtrack. We went on it four times. Oh dear 
Pingu’s baking
Finally, I am compelled to mention Pingu (again!) upon receipt of his chocolate brownie, which he sent in the post in a little Tupperware box. Yes, really. Don’t believe me, punk? See photo! Mmm…delicious too…
Went to school. No results yet. Went to the park to enjoy the sun. Got a phone call from Robert. Ran to his house. Logged onto UCAS Track.
I’m in!
Cambridge have confirmed my application which means that I must have got my grades for Maths and English! Yaaaaay!
OK, so I couldn’t resist getting up at 6 for when the website opened 
and damn, it loaded too quickly for me!
Anyway, the good news is that I got an A in History and – amazingly – a B in Physics
Having said that, I do seem to have done rather badly in History in terms of individual units! Take a look… (my additions in brackets)
6524 HISTORY 4 72 / 90 [Boundary mark for an A]
6525 HISTORY 5 86 / 90 [Coursework – A]
6526 HISTORY 6 84 / 120 [Boundary mark for a B]
6734 PHYSICS 4 59 / 90
6735 PHYSICS 5 52 / 90
6736 PHYSICS 6 89 / 120
By my number-crunching, that’s only 242 points out of 300 for A2 History – too close for comfort to the 240 boundary! Taking AS into account, of course, then I’ve got 503 points out of 600, further away from the all-important 480 boundary but not by a huge margin.
And no, before you say anything, I’m not complaining! I’m just surprised – maybe the A2 is just much more difficult to get any marks and this will be repeated for Maths and English – but then to turn around and get a B in Physics overall after how badly those exams went is astonishing.
Anyway! It’s hours till I can get to school for the rest 
come on, only 2 more As to go…
If you want real pressure, of course, fast-forward two years time. I’d like to do a shout out to my 18 year-old self in 2007. Hi! What’s it like waiting for results to an exam that will literally determine the future of your life? Either you got what you needed for university, or you didn’t.
(Source)
I had a dream last night about results. It was a frustrating, unpleasant dream: not because of the results themselves (I never got that far) but because of the Edexcel website. In my dream, you had to install a complicated graphical world first, and then look at a 3D map of your skills. I am seriously concerned that this will become reality in a few years.
Whilst waiting, I’m reading Made in America by Bill Bryson. It includes lots and lots of detail on language, charting the evolution of American speech for one thing, which just proves that parents wield a scary influence over you. (Both of my parents did languagey-type things at uni, and we still can’t get through a meal without some etymology or other coming up. Funny, you’d have thought I’d have become a better writer? )
I’m also listening to excellent Hollertronix courtesy of Pingu, exchanging e-mails with catering companies for my aunt’s birthday party and looking forward to my weekend mini-break in Brighton, which will hopefully be a celebratory one!
I guess I should continue the tradition, too. So hi there, future me! If all goes to plan, it’s 2010 and you’re waiting for your final results at uni. How did it all go? What’s it like waiting for results to an exam that will literally det… ah, never mind.
Good luck to everyone else! Let’s all hold hands.
Originally, I had planned to fully redo this site over the summer. Start from scratch, completely, and rebuild. You were supposed to arrive one day to find it entirely black with black and white photos of models posing in little clothing, for example, or a fantastic Web 2.0 interface, or little virtual worlds delivered in high quality video graphics.
Then a couple of things happened. First, I found I was busy for large chunks of the summer doing silly things like earning money. Second, even if I could design those things, you’d probably see them rolling out in the year 2020 when everyone else in the entire world has already got little virtual worlds delivered in high quality video graphics. But most importantly, I actually quite liked the design already. Well, it worked for what I wanted to do, and the whole thing took a lot of work to put together in the first place, so why throw the baby out with the bathwater?
The result is what you see before you now. (If you don’t, press Ctrl and F5 together to force refresh your browser and insist on downloading the new stylesheet.) Aside from some funky new colours and deft reorganisation of content, the main change for the user is the new emphasis on photos. It’s no Flickr, but thanks to a little bit of software from Flash Nifties photographs which were previously hidden away in blog archives should gradually make it to the light of day again, thanks to revamped galleries and randomised slideshows on the homepage.
There’s still more to do, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the changes have broken some things, but I hope the new look proves satisfactory. And, naturally, it is utterly unrelated to the new RV design, as ever.
[Comments on this post now enabled, thanks Saoirse]
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