My new baby
Hello, faithful blog reader! I’m pleased to say I had an absolutely fantastic day yesterday, which I shall now blog about for your amusement and delight. The first thing to talk about is, obviously, my beautiful new laptop as seen here. Predictably, the prettiness and eye-candy of Windows Vista and Office 2007 entranced me, and I’m still admiring all the many tiny improvements from Windows XP. The new Start Menu, in particular, is a joy to use. In addition, being a laptop, everything feels so built-in and deliciously compact: a little light now signals Bluetooth is on, rather than a separate USB dongle, for example. The one thing I can’t quite get used to is a laptop mouse – I’ve always found them fiddly – and at the moment I’m using a separate USB mouse alongside which works well for me.
Check my t-shirt 
But that’s not all! I also received generous bundles of money (thank you to my financial backers 
) as well as some pretty awesome presents. Andy Kings got me a awesome red t-shirt with DOMINICSELF.CO.UK on, which I subsequently wore all day, including during that excellent English exam. His wrapping was also replete with many jokes of sublime wit, along with some (possibly immorally aquired) Waseley goodies! Andy, I love you.
Mm.. chocolate
I also love Lucy 
who got us tickets to see Regina Spektor. She was very worried it would clash with my holiday to Russia in early September, which would have been a bit of a sad disaster (oh, didn’t I say? Mother and I are going on holiday to Russia for a week in early September!) but very thankfully the gig is actually a few days before, so hurrah! 
In the evening, we went to Pizza Express as a family to celebrate my love of pizza 18th birthday. I want the accompanying photo to firmly illustrate that I am, basically, still a child at heart: Triple Chocolate Glory for me ta! Who said only women and children liked chocolate?
Still a child at heart!
I’ve actually got a Physics exam tomorrow (!) and then that’s my exams over and done with! Super! Cheerio for now then!
(Oh and I almost forgot: badges! I also got badges! Special thanks for those )
I was determined to get something posted before midnight, so I can say I made at least one official 18th birthday blog post today!
So give it up for the Exam-O-Meter:
The Most Celebratory and Magnificent Exam-O-Meter!
Yay! It turned out to be an absolutely gift paper, with my chosen Hamlet question being on, ur, audience sympathy towards Hamlet himself, and the dreaded Blake question on his thoughts and feelings towards nature. Perfect! Honestly, the questions could not have been any more ideal and I hope I did them justice!
Stay tuned for the proper birthday blog, coming soon…
…here cometh the Exam-O-Meter, to be worshipped as a god!
The Most Exciting and Fabulous Exam-O-Meter!
My exams clashed this morning, so by choice I sat History first, although I was placed amongst the Maths students for some reason so it was ‘Dominic, you’re psychologically alone ‘ time from the start. The first question of History seemed like a gift, since it only covered 1945-1949, though maybe I should have more more ‘critical use of sources’. The second question seemed fine to me too, though the reactions I got afterwards suggest it could be seen as nasty for asking about the role of personality and individual decisions on behalf of the leaders of the superpowers. Like I said, seemed fine to me!
Core 4, which followed almost immediately, was hard. A combination of a tricky paper where I couldn’t even attempt all of the questions – in common with most people – and me being tired and slow after almost 2 hours of History writing. There was also a worrying lack of ‘show that’ questions! Nevertheless, overall I think it’ll get me through: I may well not get an A on that paper specifically, but I can afford that. I also managed to end well by cracking one of the questions literally as time ran out – and I’m now hoping my scribbles will be legible enough to get the marks!
Hmm. Baring disaster, that was my last Maths exam – or really anything – for ever. Although forever is a very long time, who knows what might happen…
This week brought one of those moments which makes you stop and think for a while. It was the news of child’s death only a few streets away from me – the sort of private tragedy which occurs many, many times across the world in a single day. From what I hear, it was also a case with nobody at fault and no-one to blame: in the blink of an eye a young child jumps out of a pushchair and is crushed by a reversing car.
The story is second- or third-hand and might not even be true, but it’s plausible enough. It’s the sort of situation I think everyone can easily imagine themselves in – going from normal to tragic in an instant, and a life suddenly ending so unexpectedly and undeservedly. For the rest of their lives, the parents might wonder what they might or could have done differently, and the driver equally condemned to wake up each morning with the image of the accident burned in his or her memory. And yet – as strong as the grief might be – it’s just not possible to get rid of accidents. Yes, you could theoretically imagine a society where no-one ever sped, or drove while drunk, or even drove cars at all, and followed every possible precaution: but you can never eliminate the unexpected, blameless yet terrible accident.
And yes, I am forced to question those who believe in a god: because you do not believe in accidents. You cannot. If you believe a being is all-knowing and all-powerful, it knew of that child’s death – because it knows everything – and could have prevented it – because it can do everything. Maybe you can convince yourselves that the choice to let the child die is a legitimate one, and that’s fine (perhaps), but that’s what it is: a choice. You cannot believe in god – at least the god described by the major religions today – and believe in accidents. Accidents are unexpected, and a god would expect everything.
Maybe that’s comforting. Maybe accidents are scary and uncontrollable, and it’s easier to believe that everything has some underlying reason. Though I’d rather believe in accidents than a being who, with the luxury to save a life, chooses not to.
…it’s the Exam-O-Meter of course!
The Most Awesome and Exceptional Exam-O-Meter!
Physics Unit 5 was almost hysterically bad. The first question didn’t appear to bear much relation to the syllabus, and I really could have done with more Maths throughout. More Maths, fewer bicycle wheels please. Unit 4 was better, and the first question even consisted of 4 ‘filling in the blanks’ of word equations, which I really could have done with in the previous exam :S but since I haven’t been able to devote much time to Physics this year it wasn’t as good as it might have been. I’m not sure I’ll do any better than last time, but that was a C, so hey.
(Important reminder: Physics doesn’t affect my university place )
And Maths Statistics 1 was a piece of cake, really. They had the audacity to ask us about mean, median, mode and interquartile ranges in the lone nasty question – stuff you know fine at GCSE and then quickly lose practice with – but hey, I don’t need full marks here. I made a few stupid mistakes elsewhere, but happily corrected them before the end. My only worry is if I lose marks for not showing my method, but hopefully I won’t.
Oh, and an early birthday card from Brent Council arrived today 
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
